San Francisco

Stem-cell pioneer John Gearhart has resigned from the editorial board of the biomedical journal that last month published a controversial paper claiming the creation of the first cloned human embryos.

Gearhart, a biologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, says that in agreeing to publish the work, the journal had failed to uphold scientific standards.

The article appeared in the 26 November issue of the online journal e-biomed: The Journal of Regenerative Medicine (2, 25–31; 2001), published by New York-based Liebert.

Using the technique that created Dolly the sheep, the researchers, led by Jose Cibelli and Michael West of Advanced Cell Technology, a biotechnology firm in Worcester, Massachusetts, transferred nuclei from human cumulus cells, which surround eggs after ovulation, to human eggs (see Nature 414, 477; 2001). A few of the eggs divided once or twice before they died.

The company claimed that it had finally cloned humans, adding that it had achieved an important first step in developing a technology that will ultimately revolutionize medicine.

But Gearhart says: “I don't think they have come anywhere near the mark of what it would take to prove that claim.” He argues that the research is lacking in several important respects, such as its failure to provide evidence that the DNA in the dividing eggs actually came from the donor cell, or that it was functional.

Gearhart says he sought an explanation from the journal's editor-in-chief William Haseltine — chairman of Human Genome Sciences, a Maryland-based biotechnology company — as to how the paper passed editorial muster, but that none was forthcoming. He says he informed Haseltine of his decision to resign in an e-mail on 3 December.

Haseltine defends the decision to publish the paper. “Our reviewers thought it was an advance over what had been done before,” he says. “It is not the ultimate word in embryogenesis, but it has not been described as that.”