'Orphan Black' Just Became Less Sci-Fi With the Latest Cloning Breakthrough

Anyone watch Orphan Black? It's an excellent show about a group of human clones that I got totally hooked on last year, and season two just started back up on Saturday. The premise is pure science fiction of course: The clones are part of an experiment by the "Neolutionists," a kind of transhumanist movement led by a massive biotech corporation. But just a few days before last week's season premiere, the concept of human cloning got a little less sci-fi, when a team of researchers successfully cloned the cells of two adult men for the first time.

The team, led by Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology, generated embryonic stem cells using the process of nuclear transfer, the same controversial method that created Dolly the famous cloned sheep back in the 90s.

The same team had already proved the method could work with humans too, in an experiment last year using cells from infants and fetuses. This latest research not only vindicates that study, but does it one better, by showing it can effectively clone cells from adults as well, something considerably trickier.

Researchers took the DNA from skin cells from middle-aged and elderly men and inserted it into donated eggs that had been stripped of their DNA. The eggs' genetic history was basically wiped clean and given a blank slate, then reprogrammed to generate a new artificial embryo that perfectly matched the DNA of the original skin cell donor.

If implanted, the embryo could theoretically lead to the birth of a child: a human clone. But that's nowhere near becoming reality yet, as scientists still don’t know if it's even possible and have yet to try.

The intention of the research isn't to create duplicate humans, but rather to study nuclear transfer stem cells as a strategy for regenerative medicine, in order to one day develop therapies for diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and spinal cord injuries. As many of these diseases develop later in life, adult stem cells are needed to develop cell-based treatments, which is why Lanza's latest discovery, published Thursday in the journal Cell Stem Cell, is important.

The team tested 77 eggs and two successfully grew into very early embryos, or blastocysts and reached the hatching stage, at which point they're able to divide indefinitely. The hatching blastocysts eventually generated a stable human embryonic stem cell line.

The embryonic stem cells could theoretically be manipulated into any type of cell, which could be used to create patient-specific therapies, or eventually build a library of various stem cells ready to be used for treatment.

That is the hope. The ethical quandary with nuclear transfer is twofold: First, since the method involves stripping a donor egg of its DNA, some people consider it to be killing a human being and are morally against it. Also, even though it's currently used for medical research only, the fact that it could maybe eventually be used to create human clones raises a host of ethical questions.

Already some groups are using Lanza’s latest research to reignite the debate over human cloning. But growing embryonic stem cells beyond the early stage that scientists have reached so far would be extremely difficult to do, experts say. "I don't think that's coming anytime soon,” Paul Knoepfler of the University of California, Davis, told NPR. “But certainly this kind of technology could be abused by some kind of rogue scientist.”

Which as it so happens is the very dystopian scenario Orphan Black is based on. The villain is a rogue, extremist biologist convinced that cloning science could and should be used to create superhumans that can conquer disease and even death. The moral complications and social ramifications involved with that quest drive the plot—and may become more familiar in real life sooner than you think.