Who is pushing to legalize cloned meat? Follow the money -- and there are strong connections to human genetic engineering.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA)'s draft risk assessment leans heavily on the work of animal-cloning companies Cyagra and ViaGen. Over a quarter of the 700-page draft is a data dump from those two -- a fact that the New York Times failed to mention, even when quoting the president of ViaGen saying "I think that this draft is going to provide the industry the comfort it needs."

ViaGen is part of the Exeter Life Science Group, owned by billionaire John Sperling, who also financed the notorious Genetic Savings and Clone (GSC). Viagen's chief scientist, Irina Polejaeva, was once GSC's, and when GSC closed ViaGen took over their gene banking operation. The cloned pets were rightly described by Wired as "a footnote to John Sperling's grand plan" -- and so are the cows and pigs. The plan is people -- living forever.

Cyagra was a subsidiary of Advanced Cell Technology (ACT), of press-release infamy. ACT sold Cyagra in one of its desperate grabs for cash, but chief scientist Robert Lanza and his former colleague Jose Cibelli (a co-author of Hwang Woo-suk's and a former consultant to the California stem cell institute -- it's a small universe) are cited throughout the FDA report.

The surface agenda the FDA addresses is public safety (though Stuart Newman says "it's potentially a health hazard"); the agenda hidden in plain sight is that of commercial interests; and behind that lies the specter of human genetic engineering. It's a mutually reinforcing spiral: The animal cloners have been relying on human medical research (and of course feeding the starving) to make their work seem less unacceptable -- and the human cloners rely on the animal work to make theirs seem more reasonable.

The public does not want cloned meat and certainly wants it to be labeled, which the FDA says it cannot require. All the more reason to object now. The Center for Food Safety has been opposing animal cloning for years. So has the Organic Consumers Association, which has set up a handy site for responding to the FDA's call for public comment.

Public support in the US for embryonic stem cell research is on the decline, surprisingly, after four years of increases (see the first graph). But I don't think this, the top conclusion of the press release accompanying the latest [PDF] annual Virginia Commonwealth University Life Sciences Survey, is the most relevant inference from the results. VCU's several years of consistent polling offer two more relevant inferences concerning research cloning.

First, the American public holds a slight net opposition to research cloning, and this has been generally been the case (see the second graph). Despite researchers and advocates asserting that research cloning is just another critical component of stem cell research, the public seems to draw a distinction.

What's also interesting is comparing the two different wordings the pollsters asked this question. They've always asked for sentiment concerning "human cloning technology IF it is used ONLY to help medical research develop new treatments for disease," and this yields a six percent net opposition - the same as in 2002. In the last two years, VCU also asked about "human cloning technology IF it is used to create human embryos that will provide stem cells for human therapeutic purposes," which this year gave a 22 point net negative. Why such a difference? The first question mentions neither "embryos" nor "stem cells," which have negative connotations. And it also used the more positive "develop new treatments" instead of "for therapeutic purposes."

The second key conclusion that I draw is around the respondents' self-reporting of their understanding (see the third graph). I've been concerned that poor reporting and political polarization around stem cell research is contributing to public misconceptions, particularly around the differences among cloning and stem cell techniques. The latest VCU data bears this out. The respondents' understanding of the difference between reproductive and "therapeutic" cloning is not only a net negative, but has been getting worse for years. This is something to worry about.

Austin Smith

Research cloning is a peculiar beast. Although its utility and necessity as a component of regenerative medicine is uncertain, research advocates are generally willing to "go to the mat" in its defense. It's not been proven in animal models, it raises more concerns than stem cell research with leftover IVF embryos, and it arouses greater opposition among the public. Are the advocates just unwilling to take anything off the table? Or do they feel a need to close their ranks? Are they overextending themselves? Or is there a bevy of unpublished data supporting its utility?

Some scientists, though, are open with their skepticism towards the use of cloning techniques in stem cell research. The latest is embryonic stem cell researcher Austin Smith, the Director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Stem Cell Research and "one of Britain's most respected experts in the field." He stated that, "Its prominence is out of proportion to the significance of what's being done, and there are real question marks about whether it has any utility at all."

Read the full article at The Times (London).