A
frog, a sheep, a cow, mice, pigs, goats and a monkey.
All
cloned. Now,
humans. At least that's the claim of Clonaid.
Cloning
has been evolving since 5000 BC.
Early humans discovered that if they planted seeds produced by
the heartiest plants, the next crop would be a strong one. This was
the first step in manipulating life to suit human needs, which is the
ultimate goal of cloning.
May
1971 "The main public effect of the remarkable clonal frog
produced some ten years ago in Oxford by the zoologist John Gurdon has
not been awe of the elegant scientific implication of this frog's
existence, but fear that a similar experiment might someday be done
with human cells." --The
Atlantic Monthly
24
February 1997 - Researchers at Scotland's Roslin
Institute sparked international debate when they announced the
cloning of a sheep named Dolly. The event brought humankind to another
crossroads of scientific research and ethical concerns.
Dolly
does not merely take after her biological mother. She is a carbon
copy, a laboratory counterfeit so exact that she is in essence her
mother's identical twin.
2
March 1997 - In a research accomplishment that could be important to
widely diverse endeavors in medical research, scientists at the Oregon
Regional Primate
Research Center have established the technology for creating
genetically indistinguishable monkeys.
March
1997 - Steven Vere
wrote, "It is clear that human cloning has enormous potential
benefits and few real negative consequences.
As with many scientific advances of the past, such as airplanes
and computers, the only real threat is to our own narrow mental
complacency."
20
February 1998 - Calf
clone: The
Korean Times reported
that researchers at the Seoul
National University had successfully cloned a calf using
methods identical to those that produced Dolly.
22
July 1998 - "The first reproducible cloning of a mammal from
adult cells, which has successfully yielded three generations and more
than 50 identical cloned mice, is reported in the international
science journal Nature by an international team of scientists
at the University
of Hawaii."
20
April 1999 - Two more calves are cloned in Japan.
27
April 1999 - Nexia Biotechnologies Inc. of Montreal, Quebec have
produced the world's first cloned goats. The company's eventual goal
is to produce goats with a human gene that will produce milk
containing spider-silk proteins. The proteins would be extracted and
"used for artificial tendons
or ligaments, tissue repair, wound healing and sutures."
--Religious
Tolerance Org.
28
April 2000 - A pig named Xena
is the latest addition to the biotech clone farm. The achievement
could be a first step towards producing vital organs for transplant
that would not be rejected by the human immune system.
28
April 2000 - "A new cloning technique produces animals that are
even younger than the cells that made them. This paradoxical
accomplishment could translate into a host of benefits to human
health, including the creation of young, healthy cells to replace
ailing hearts and bones". --Science
Matters
March
2001 - U.S. fertility specialist Panayiotis Zavos and a team of
international scientists announced in March that hundreds of couples
had volunteered for an experiment to create cloned children. The team
said it was poised to help infertile couples bear clones as early as
2003. --MSNBC
Cloning Timeline
8
May 2001 - Australia's first
cloned pig is now five weeks old, has been weaned and is healthy
and growing normally. It
is anticipated that the new cloning technology will have a major
impact in guarding against the outbreak of animal disease and in the
use of animal organs for transplantation into humans.
7
August 2001 - "Scientists, determined to create the world's first
cloned babies, defended their plans against charges from animal
cloning experts that the technology was too dangerous to apply to
humans." --Christian
Science Monitor
6
April 2002 - Dr. Severino Antinori announced that a woman who joined
his program for infertile couples was eight weeks pregnant with a
fetus derived by human reproductive cloning.
In
this evolving series of clonal events, two trends have been
developing:
1)
As scientists have come closer to human cloning, public resistance to
it has increased. On
August 1st 2001, the US House of Representatives passed a
bill making human cloning a criminal offence.
The situation is similar in Europe, where the ECU has opposed
human cloning.
2)
The second trend has been an increase in support for cloning of
animals for propagating endangered animal species and producing
replacement organs for transplant patients. Along with this has been
increasing support for stem cell research, though some groups have
opposed the use of human embryos.
Historically,
the idea of cloning humans has been considered a fantasy. That is,
until the past couple of decades when technological advances allowed
scientists to offer substantial proof that their visions were indeed
viable.
The
World Wide Web has a number of sites with a wealth of information as
well as detailed arguments against and in defense of human cloning:
Several
Web sites, strongly opposed to human cloning, either on religious
grounds or on the basis of the potential dangers of cloning, include:
Opposed
to cloning on both moral and practical grounds, Dr.
Dixon’s site has real video coverage of the cloning debate along
with news headlines on human cloning from April 1999 to April 2001.
Among
the Defenders of cloning The
Human Cloning Foundation is the official site in support of human
cloning. They have
numerous supportive essays.
With
no doubt that human cloning will happen Nick
Boston (Yale Univ. Dept. of Philosophy) wrote a pro-cloning
article on “What
I think about human cloning.” He
thinks it’s ok.
News
sites covering the issue include The Washington
Post’s special
report.
A
Wired
magazine article starts: "Human cloning has always been
frightening, seductive--and completely out of reach. Not
anymore."
Some
Web sites have done their best to remain neutral, examining the
history and issues involved in the debate.
A Worldbook
report on the cloning of the first pigs raised the question of whether
humans are next and examines the history and ethical considerations of
cloning.
In
February 2001, Time
magazine included a very readable article examining the pros and cons
of cloning. For an
excellent essay on the ethics of cloning see Alonzo
Fyfe’s
article.
For
links to other sites, The
Cloning Directory presents a comprehensive list of resources and
book reviews. Similarly, Mammalian
and Human Cloning Links
provides
not only links but articles, organizations, FAQ’s and related news
items.
Scientific
sites dealing with the subject usually attempt to be objective without
being overly technical. A
number of scientific articles offer good coverage in laymen’s
language. Scientific
American has an article on
"Dolly’s Legacy" and how nuclear transfer "used to
clone Dolly and now owned by Geron may help scientists develop more
potent stem-cell therapies."
Dr.
J. Love’s site imparts very clear and basic information about
how cloning is performed. It’s a site for newcomers and
beginners in the field of cloning.
One
Web site headed How
to Clone a Human actually details the materials and procedure
necessary for cloning a human.
The
debate as well as the research goes on.
Surely, someone somewhere will clone a human, despite ethical
considerations. Whether
it’s done for profit or fame or for the satisfaction of crossing
scientific 
frontiers,
it will be accompanied by rationalizations intended to justify any
errors or consequences, however terrible, in the name of science and
good intentions.
Because
the possible outcomes of human cloning may be either horrendous or
joyous, it seems essential for responsible humans to become aware of
both the destructive and beneficial potentials of the sciences related
to cloning and its offshoot, stem cell research.
The Internet offers some excellent resources.
