Could headless human clones be created to grow organs?

British scientists have created a frog embryo without a head.

Could the same procss used to create the headless frog be adapted to grow human organs such as hearts, kidneys, liver and pancreases in an embryonic sac living in an artificial womb?

Archive: October 1997

"There could be great pressure to combine cloning technology with the creation of partial foetuses, missing heads, arms or legs, as organ factories for tomorrow's people. These could be developed on an experimental level somewhere in the the world in countries where there is little or no gene legislation."

Dr Dixon called for an urgent global biotechnology summit to examine every aspect of genetics, and provide the basis for international agreements. International inconsistencies on various aspects of genetic engineering, including human cloning, urgently need to be ironed out."

Speaking on BBC World Service, Dixon added: "We could see the creation of human beings which are growing yet technically dead because they have no brain - but is that the kind of world we want to live in? Hundreds of these humanoids could be made. Their creation will raise profound questions. The real issue is not Dolly the cloned sheep, or now the headless frog. It is how we want society to use gene technology now we have the ability to do more or less whatever we like with life, designing all kinds of bizarre creatures or hybrids. I am far more concerned by tomorrow's headlines than today's, and by the fact that most people are years behind reality when it comes to thinking through the impact of what is going to happen next."

* Update: In January 2003 Israeli scientists reported that they had grown an entire miniature human kidney inside a mouse, by taking a small ball of cells from an aborted human foetus 6-8 weeks after conception and allowing it to develop in the mouse. See news.  We are entering strange territory: a world where rabbit fur genes have been added to cotton, where spider genes have been added to goats so that spider web proteins are secreted in their milk, where insects have been created with extra eyes on their wings. The greatest limiting factor in future will not be what can or cannot be done, but merely the appetite for doing it. But the lesson of history shows us that whatever can be done, will be done, somewhere, somehow, by someone.

It's the same with head transplants: would anyone want to do it even if it is possible? The answer is yes, and it has already been done several times successfully in monkeys.