Scientists successful at cloning monkeys

A technical breakthrough has enabled scientists to create for the first time dozens of cloned embryos from adult monkeys, raising the prospect of the same procedure being used to make cloned human embryos.

The work was led by Shoukhrat Mitalipov, a Russian-born scientist at the Oregon National Primate Research Centre in Beaverton. Dr Mitalipov helped to pioneer a new way of handling primate eggs during the cloning process, which involved fusing each egg with a nucleus taken from a skin cell of an adult primate.