Washington, Jan. 12 :    Washington, Jan. 12:  When television pictures of South Block with its hordes of monkeys were beamed into American homes on prime time news last night, viewers assumed it was yet another bit of bad news from New Delhi: maybe another nuclear test or a flare-up with Pakistan. But no, it was only tidings which had the potential of being bad, even dangerous. The real news was that scientists in the US had created the first genetically engineered monkey, fertilising monkey eggs injected with genes from jellyfish and transferring them into wombs of surrogate mother monkeys. Shots of South Block were only used to focus on the monkey menace which had become synomous with the seat of the Indian government. But the potential bad news was that if this experiment in Portland, Oregon, was to succeed, designer monkeys could one day be made to run South Block. Much worse, a logical corollary of the landmar k experiment would be to genetically manipulate human beings, creating babies of the kind that parents desire. For this reason, news of the Oregon experiment, a full account of which is published in today's issue of the journal Science was met with a chorus of disapproval. Prof. Lori B. Andrews of the Chicago-Kent College of Law was quoted in The New York Times as saying 'once you start attempting genetic engineering in monkeys, humans can't be far behind'. She warned that the Oregon experiment cracked open the door to a future world where genetic enhancement was sold by fertility clinics. In a recent poll in the US, 43 per cent of couples were asked if they would use an opportunity to enhance their babies genetically. A whopping 42 per cent replied in the affirmative, seeking to upgrade their child's mental faculties. Already, fertility clinics in the US offer tests which allow parents to select embryos which carry traits of their choice or those without preferred characteristics. Eric Kleiman, research director of defence of animals, a global group for protection of animals in California was quoted in the Washington Post: 'Before it was mice. Now monkeys - both cloned and gene-altered.' Kleiman warned: 'It is pretty clear who is next. And it will be just as reprehensible when people are manufactured to suit experimenters'. Gerald Schatten, who with Anthony W.S. Chan, led the research at the Oregon Regional Primate Research Centre, defended the experiment. 'There is nothing we have done that accelerates genetic modification in people. Let us say you want your kid on the basketball team. You can't take him to the coach and say: 'He has this growth gene in there but it is not expressed and he is not growing.'' The Oregon scientists said the objective of their experiment was to create monkeys with genes known to cause disease in humans. They hoped to produce monkeys with Alzheimer's disease, breast cancer, hereditary blindness and the like so that new vaccines could be tested against such ailments. Mice are already used for testing such vaccines: the first gene-altered mouse was created 25 years ago. But unlike monkeys, mice and other such animals are not close enough to humans to show optimum results of the vaccines. Schatten said: 'Animals that don't have monthly cycles don't suffer from breast cancer like women. That is why we think a limited number of specially bred monkeys could help us eliminate cancers'. Research by his team has not been easy. Of the 222 gene-altered eggs on which fertilisation was attempted, only 40 became embryos that could be tranferred to wombs. Of these, only five caused pregnancies. Three of the six foetuses - including one twin - were still born. And of the other three, only one actually showed the presence of jellyfish gene.