Koreans Clone Again

A good friend of mine is leaving soon to go to South Korea, land of the cloned poodle. Reports today indicate that this group, once associated with controversial Woo Suk Hwang succeeded in cloning a wolf. Wolves have not been spotted in the wild in Korea in 2 decades and the lead researcher argues that cloning could help them and other endangered species survive. The results will be published in an upcoming issue of "Cloning and Stem Cells." Let's just hope they don't get their hands on any velociraptor DNA.

In semi-related news, researchers in Nevada have created a chimeric sheep that's 15% human in the hope that future advancement of the technology, achieved by injecting human cells into a developing sheep fetus, can be used to grow matched tissue for organ transplantation. This comes just a year after Bush urged a ban on human-animal hybrids in his 2006 State of the Union.