This undated image made available by the Oregon Health & Science University in May 2013 shows a stem cell colony developed from cloned human embryos. Scientists have finally recovered stem cells from... (Associated Press) 
 
 Scientists have finally recovered stem cells from cloned human embryos, a longstanding goal that could lead to new treatments for such illnesses as Parkinson's disease and diabetes. 
 
 A prominent expert called the work a landmark, but noted that a different, simpler technique now under development may prove more useful. 
 
 Stem cells can turn into any cell of the body, so scientists are interested in using them to create tissue for treating disease. Transplanting brain tissue might treat Parkinson's disorder, for example, and pancreatic tissue might be used for diabetes. 
 
 But transplants run the risk of rejection, so more than a decade ago, researchers proposed a way around that: Create tissue from stem cells that bear the patient's own DNA, obtained with a process called therapeutic cloning. 
 
 If DNA from a patient is put into a human egg, which is then grown into an early embryo, the stem cells from that embryo would provide a virtual genetic match. So in theory, tissues created from them would not be rejected by the patient. 
 
 That idea was met with some ethical objections because harvesting the stem cells involved destroying human embryos. 
 
 Scientists have tried to get stem cells from cloned human embryos for about a decade, but they've failed. Generally, that's because the embryos stopped developing before producing the cells. In 2004, a South Korean scientist claimed to have gotten stem cells from cloned human embryos, but that turned out to be a fraud. 
 
 In Wednesday's edition of the journal Cell, however, scientists in Oregon report harvesting stem cells from six embryos created from donated eggs. Two embryos had been given DNA from skin cells of a child with a genetic disorder, and the others had DNA from fetal skin cells. 
 
 Shoukhrat Mitalipov of the Oregon Health & Science University, who led the research, said the success came not from a single technical innovation, but from revising a series of steps in the process. He noted it had taken six years to reach the goal after doing it with monkey embryos. 
 
 Mitalipov also said that based on monkey work, he believes human embryos made with the technique could not develop into cloned babies, and he has no interest in trying to do that. Scientists have cloned more than a dozen kinds of mammals, starting with Dolly the sheep. 
 
 The new work was financed by the university and the Leducq Foundation in Paris. 
 
 Dr. George Daley, a stem cell expert at Children's Hospital Boston who didn't participate in the work, called the new results "one landmark step in a very long journey" toward creating DNA-matched transplant tissue. 
 
 Now, Daley said, scientists must compare the embryo-cloning approach with another technology that reprograms blood or skin cells directly into substitutes for embryonic stem cells. This reprogramming approach is technically simpler and doesn't involve embryos or require the donation of human eggs, and it was widely acclaimed when it was reported in 2007. Its Japanese developer shared a Nobel Prize last year. 
 
 But these substitute cells show some molecular differences compared to embryonic ones, which has led to questions about whether they can safely be used for treating patients. So it's essential to compare the cells from the two methods, Daley said. 
 
 The new results mean "we have another tool," he said. "We have to learn more about this tool." 
 
 Daley said he believed scientists will prefer using the reprogramming approach unless it can be proven "beyond a shadow of a doubt" that embryo cloning produces better cells for treating patients. 
 
 Mitalipov said he believed his technique would present a particular advantage for treating patients with a certain type of rare diseases. These are caused by mutations in genes of the mitochondria, the power plants of cells. He noted his technique, unlike the cell-reprogramming approach, would supply tissue with new mitochondrial genes that could replace defective ones. Those new genes would come from the egg. 
 
 The Rev. Tad Pacholczyk, director of education for National Catholic Bioethics Center, an independent think tank in Philadelphia, reiterated his opposition to embryo cloning, calling the approach unethical. 
 
 "It involves the decision to utilize early human beings as repositories for obtaining desired cells," he said. "You're creating them only to destroy them." 
 
 Marcy Darnovsky, executive director of the Center for Genetics and Society in Berkeley, California, said she was glad that Mitalipov doubted the embryos could be used to clone babies. She said the report still provides a good opportunity for the federal government to ban the use of cloning for reproduction. ||||| Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. 
 
 Researchers say they have made powerful stem cells from both young and old adults using cloning techniques, and also found clues about why it is so difficult to do this with human beings. 
 
 The team, at Massachusetts-based Advanced Cell Technology and the Institute for Stem Cell Research in Los Angeles, say they used the cloning methods to create the stem cells to match a 35-year-old man and a 75-year-old man. 
 
 They used a bit of skin from each man, took the DNA from the skin cells and inserted it into the egg cell of a female donor, and grew very early embryos called blastocysts, the team reports in the journal Cell Stem Cell. Cells from these embryos closely match the men and could, in theory, be used to make near-identical tissue, blood or organ transplants for the men. 
 
 If verified, it would be only the second confirmed time someone’s been able to use cloning methods to make human embryonic stem cells, considered the body’s master cells. 
 
 “Therapeutic cloning has long been envisioned as a means for generating patient-specific stem cells that could be used to treat a range of age-related diseases,” said Dr. Robert Lanza, chief scientific officer for Advanced Cell Technology. 
 
 “However, despite cloning success in animals, the derivation of stem cells from cloned human embryos has proven elusive. Only one group has ever succeeded, and their lines were generated using fetal and infant cells.” 
 
 That was last year, at Oregon Health & Science University. 
 
 When human embryonic stem cells were first discovered in 1998, scientists immediately dreamed of using cloning technology to help people grow their own organ and tissue transplants, and to use them to study disease. They’d be perfect genetic matches for each patient, meaning an end to a lifetime of taking dangerous immune-suppressing drugs after an organ transplant. 
 
 But in the many years since, no lab’s been able to do the work easily. It seems it is much harder to clone a human being than it is to clone a sheep, a frog or a mouse. 
 
 And using the cloning technique is controversial, because it involves creating, then destroying, a human embryo. 
 
 “Without regulations in place, such embryos could also be used for human reproductive cloning, although this would be unsafe and grossly unethical,” Lanza told NBC News. 
 
 “We also saw that the embryos that developed the furthest were from the same egg donors, suggesting that genetic variation between egg donors plays an important role in the developmental potential of cloned embryos.”
– Scientists have made a long-sought—and controversial—breakthrough: They created stem cells from cloned human embryos for the first time, reports AP. In theory, the development by researchers at Oregon Health & Science University means that doctors might someday be able to grow tissue from an ailing patient's own DNA, thus reducing the chance of rejection in a transplant. Commonly cited examples are growing brain tissue to help a patient with Parkinson's disease, or pancreatic tissue to help diabetics. It's "one landmark step in a very long journey," says an expert at Children's Hospital Boston who wasn't involved with the work. The Oregon scientists say they don't think the embryos used in their process could develop into babies, reports NBC News, but the procedure is nonetheless controversial because it requires that the embryos be destroyed. Nature notes that competing technology in the last decade has made the push toward embryonic stem cells less intensive, but adds that the new paper in Cell is sure to reignite the debate. The scientists used eggs from donors, and it took six years to replicate the success they had with monkey embryos. They chalked it up to a series of small revisions over the years instead of a single aha! moment.