Human-Animal Clones and Healthy Lives

The creator of Dolly the sheep has predicted that treatments using stem cells could become as common as antibiotics. Professor Ian Wilmut, director of the Scottish Centre for Regenerative Medicine at Edinburgh University, said the first of these revolutionary therapies is expected to be available in around a decade and will develop rapidly over the coming years. His comments come in the wake of the decision by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) to allow British scientists to create human-animal embryos for research, which Wilmut described as an "important opportunity" in the search for new treatments for diseases such as Alzheimer's.