Chinese scientists clone five monkeys and deliberately give them mental health conditions using gene editing

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Five cloned monkeys have been born with a host of genetic mental health conditions in a controversial experiment in China.

The monkeys - all clones of one primate - have been specially bred to create a 'diseased' population of animals to use in laboratory tests.

All five have the same DNA altered, which has resulted in symptoms similar to the human conditions of anxiety, depression and schizophrenia.

The quintet were born at the Institute of Neuroscience (ION) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in Shanghai. Researchers used the same technique as was used last year to produce Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua – the first ever two cloned monkeys - and Dolly the sheep, famously cloned in the late 90s in Scotland.

The animals will be destined for a life in a laboratory and the scientists claim the gene-edited primates will be used to test groundbreaking new treatments for diseases ranging from brain disorders to cancers.

But this latest move will inevitably raise ethical questions about the future of human cloning - and how close modern science is moving towards gene-edited clones.

China has also been rocked by controversy after scientist He Jiankui claimed to have created the world's first genetically edited babies. State officials say he acted illegally in pursuit of fame and fortune.

The vast majority of animals cloning procedures end in failure with as little as 1 per cent resulting in living, apparently healthy offspring.

Dolly, who was cloned at the Roslin Institute in 1996, has developed arthritis earlier than might have been expected.

Scientists believe she may have aged prematurely because she was cloned from a six-year-old adult.

A study by professor Ian Wilmut, leader of the team that cloned Dolly the Sheep, highlighted unpredictable defects suffered by cloned animals.

He found a calf cloned in France did well for several weeks but died suddenly at 51 days after its ability to produce white blood cells failed.

Scientists at Roslin had to put down a 12- day- old cloned lamb because the muscles around its lungs had grown so thick that it had great difficulty breathing.

Dr Julia Baines, Science Policy Adviser at PETA UK, said: 'Cloning is a horror show: A waste of lives, time, and money – and the suffering that such experiments cause is unimaginable.

'Because cloning has a failure rate of at least 90 per cent, these two monkeys represent misery and death on an enormous scale.'

Yesterday scientists revealed they had cloned two monkeys, potentially paving the way to ‘copying’ humans.

'The work in this paper is not a stepping-stone to establishing methods for obtaining live born human clones', said Professor Robin Lovell-Badge, Group Leader of The Francis Crick Institute.

'This clearly remains a very foolish thing to attempt, it would be far too inefficient, far too unsafe, and it is also pointless.

'Clones may be genetically identical, but we are far from only being a product of our genes.'



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I love Animals, but some do taste nice !