It has been suggested that the technologies developed by the two research organisations might be combined to grow tissues, even whole organs, that would not be rejected by transplant patients. Some scientists believe it will soon be able to take tissue from a new born baby and clone, freeze and store cells for transplant operations, should they be needed in the future. Dr Griffin goes a step further saying that adults too could benefit from having their own cells copied. But he downplayed the concept of manufacturing tissues and organs in the lab. For diseases like leukaemia, cell therapy is almost routine.
Tissues are very much more complicated than a group of cells.
When people talk about creating artificial skin and artificial organs in the test tube, I think this is definitely moving towards science fiction. Nevertheless, Dr Griffin was enthusiastic at the chance of transferring Roslin's expertise with animal experimentation to the human being. Most of our applications that we have been pursuing were principally concerned with the genetic modification of farm animals and the prospect of contributing to a whole new area of medicine is certainly very exciting for us. In collaboration with the Centre for Genome Research in Edinburgh, the Roslin Institute's submission seeks to make a distinction between therapeutic and reproductive cloning. At least with pregnancy cloning you are creating a life, you're not destroying anything.