Chinese Researchers Clone 1 Rhesus Monkey to Speed Drug Testing
Updated
Updated · The Conversation · Jul 8
Chinese Researchers Clone 1 Rhesus Monkey to Speed Drug Testing
1 articles · Updated · The Conversation · Jul 8
Summary
A rhesus monkey was cloned in China in 2024 in a world first, with researchers aiming to create primates physiologically close to humans for faster drug testing.
The work used somatic cell nuclear transfer, but mammal cloning remains inefficient because adult cells often fail to fully reset into an embryo-like state.
That low success rate has kept cloning expensive and hard to scale, even 30 years after Dolly the sheep was produced only after 277 attempts.
Animal welfare advocates challenged the monkey experiment on ethical grounds, arguing the suffering involved may outweigh limited immediate real-world applications.
Beyond labs, cloning is now used selectively in livestock, pets and endangered-species conservation, while human reproductive cloning remains broadly barred for safety and ethical reasons.