The new report documents embryos made with ordinary skin cells. But it’s not the first time human cloned embryos have been made. In 2005, for example, scientists in Britain reported using embryonic stem cells to produce a cloned embryo. It matured enough to produce stem cells, but none were extracted. Stem cells weren’t produced by the new embryos either, and because of that, experts reacted coolly to the research.

“I found it difficult to determine what was substantially new,” said Doug Melton of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. He said the “next big advance will be to create a human embryonic stem cell line” from cloned embryos.

“This has yet to be achieved.” Dr George Daley of the Harvard institute and Children's Hospital Boston called the new report interesting but agreed that “the real splash”  will be when somebody creates stem cell lines from cloned human embryos. Dr Samuel Wood, co-author of the new paper and chief executive of Stemagen Corp of La Jolla, California, said he and his colleagues are now attempting to produce stem cell lines from the embryos.
The work was published online Thursday by the journal Stem Cells. Stem cells from cloned embryos could provide a valuable tool for studying diseases, screening drugs and, perhaps someday, creating transplant material to treat conditions like diabetes and Parkinson’s disease.

“The process “involves creating human lives in the laboratory solely to destroy them for alleged benefit to others,” said Richard Doerflinger, spokesman for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The cloning approach involves inserting DNA from a person into an egg, and then growing the egg into an embryo about five days old before extracting the stem cells. In the new work, researchers took skin cells from Wood and another volunteer and produced three embryos with DNA matching the men’s.