British cloning experts have often been very slow to announce their recent work , and Britain is a world centre for cloning technology. Dolly was a full grown sheep when the press first saw her, and work began to make her at least two years earlier. Over ten years ago I met a leading British embryologist who was already attempting human cloning , in defiance of public revulsion. His work has remained secret. This pattern of secrecy was also seen last month in the US when Jose Cibelli announced that he head cloned nimself by combining one of his cells with an empty cows egg - in work conducted three years earlier, before Dolly was even born.
Secrecy breeds mistrust.
British scientists may have difficulty persuading people around the world to believe their denials. I predict that any involved in such work will prefer to wait for official government before making an announcement about work already done. Such experiments in humans, though legal in Britain, have required a licience since 1990. However, just last week, the official advisory bodies HFEA and HGAC recommended a green light for making large numbers of human cloned embryos to be used in human tissue factories with a ban on implantation and births. Their conclusions were widely anticipated and leaks may have given encouraged maverick cloners to press ahead, worried about being left behind in the global human cloning race.