Stepping into a research area marked by controversy and fraud, Harvard University scientists said Tuesday they are trying to clone human embryos to create stem cells they hope can be used one day to help conquer a host of diseases. ‘We are convinced that work with embryonic stem cells holds enormous promise,’ said Harvard provost Dr. Steven Hyman. The privately funded work is aimed at devising treatments for such ailments as diabetes, Lou Gehrig’s disease, sickle-cell anemia and leukemia. Harvard is only the second American university to announce its venture into the challenging, politically charged research field. The University of California, San Francisco, began efforts at embryo cloning a few years ago, only to lose a top scientist to England. It has since resumed its work but is not as far along as experiments already under way by the Harvard group. A company, Advanced Cell Technology Inc. of Alameda, Calif., is trying to restart its embryo cloning efforts. And British scientists said last year that they had cloned a human embryo, though without extracting stem cells. Scientists have long held out the hope of ‘therapeutic cloning’ against diseases like diabetes, Parkinson’s disease and spinal cord […]