Creator of Dolly the sheep bids to clone human cells

The scientist who created Dolly the sheep said today that cloning human embryos would be an "extremely powerful" tool in understanding motor neurone disease.

Professor Ian Wilmut has applied for a licence to clone cells from sufferers of the debilitating condition to discover how the disease develops. He stressed the licence would not lead to the creation of a human clone.

Professor Wilmut, of the Roslin Institute, said: "We are not talking about producing a baby, this is strictly about creating cells. We want to produce stem cells from these cloned embryos that will allow us to study the early development of the disease.

"It is really not something we understand at all at the moment."

He has applied for the licence from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. If the Government approves, the cloned embryos will be created with donor eggs from IVF clinics.

They will be fused with cell material from people known to be at risk of motor neurone disease, creating a cloned embryo with the potential to develop the condition. The embryos will be allowed to grow for six days before stem cells are harvested.