HEADLESS FROG

Scientists have created an embryo of a frog without a head, raising the prospect of engineering headless human clones which could be used to grow organs and tissues for transplant surgery.
The headless frog embryos have not been allowed to live longer than a week, but the scientists believe the technique could be adapted to grow human organs such as hearts, kidneys, livers and the pancreas in an embryonic sac living in an artificial womb. If human cloning becomes possible and many scientists believe it is inevitable following the birth of Dolly, the first adult sheep clone, the two breakthroughs could be combined so that people requiring transplants could have organs grown to order from their own cloned cells.
Jonathan Slack, professor of developmental biology at Bath University and a leading embryologist, says he can now create headless frog embryos relatively easily by manipulating certain genes. Using the technique, he has been able to suppress not only development of a tadpole,s head, but also its trunk and tail.
Slack's ideas have angered some academics. Professor Andrew Linzey, an animal ethicist at Oxford university, denounced his research. "This sort of thinking beggars belief. It's scientific fascism because we would be creating other beings whose very existence would be to serve the dominant group. It is morally regressive to create a mutant form of life, Linzey said.