Unsuccessful copycats
a number of cloned monkey embryos that look healthy are in reality a "gallery of horrors' deep within. This was revealed during a study done by a researcher of Advanced Cell Technology (act), a us-based company that recently cloned human embryos for the first time in the world history. The study of Tanja Dominko, the researcher, indicates that there is something unique about primate eggs that makes cloning monkeys or people far more difficult than cloning other animals. At the very least, the experiments show that there's a lot to learn before primates can be cloned ( www.newscientist.com , December 12, 2001).
During the past many years, several groups have cloned monkeys. But while the embryos look normal, no one has ever got them to develop further. To try and figure out what was going wrong, Dominko looked at 265 cloned rhesus macaque embryos created by nuclear transfer