Not doing so only because of fear of public reaction: Xu Xiaochun.
By Sreejith Vallikunnu
Xu Xiaochun, the chief scientist behind the world’s biggest cloning factory, located in China, has revealed that the factory has adequate technology to replicate humans, and is only holding off for fear of public reaction, according to an AFP report.
China’s Boyalife Group and its partners are building the giant commercial animal cloning centre in the northern Chinese port of Tianjin. The plant will go into production within the next seven months and aims for an output of one million cloned cows a year by 2020.
Speaking about replication of cloned humans, AFP quoted Xu as saying, “The technology is already there. if this is allowed, I don’t think there are other companies better than Boyalife that make better technology.
“Currently the firm does not engage in human cloning activities”, Xu said, adding that it has to be “self-restrained” because of a possible adverse reaction.
But social values can change, he pointed out, citing changing views of homosexuality and suggesting that in time humans could have more choices about their own reproduction.
“Unfortunately, currently, the only way to have a child is to have it be half its mum, half its dad,” he said.
“Maybe in the future you have three choices instead of one, you either have fifty-fifty, or you have a choice of having the genetics 100 percent from Daddy or 100 percent from Mummy. This is only a choice,” the scientist added.
Xu, 44, went to university in Canada and the US and has previously worked for US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, and in drug development.
The world’s biggest cloning factory in China will be jointly built by Sinica, Peking University’s Institute of Molecular Medicine, the Tianjin International Joint Academy of Biomedicine, and the Republic of Korea’s Sooam Biotech Research Foundation with an investment of 200 million yuan ($31 million).
It will clone animals, including sniffer and pet dogs, beef cattle and racehorses. Its main building is already under construction and due to be put into use in the first half of 2016.
According to Xu, the plant will produce 100,000 cattle embryos a year initially, eventually increasing to 1 million that help Chinese farmers who were struggling to produce enough beef cattle to meet market demand.
Scientists have cloned mice, cattle and other animals since the world’s first cloned sheep, Dolly, was born on July 5, 1996, in Britain. Since 2000, Chinese scientists have cloned sheep, cattle and pigs.
3 Comments
More beef cows. So much for Paris and curbing global warming.
Of all countries on the face of Planet Earth that wouldn’t need to clone human beings, China is doing it! Isn’t this the nation that has been limiting births for decades? A nation that has an imbalance of males to females? Let’s hope the recipe doesn’t fall in the hands of the radical Middle East. Or do they already have it?
Creepy shit.