How Human Cloning Will Work

by Kevin Bonsor and Cristen Conger

On July 5, 1997, the most famous sheep in modern history was born. Ian Wilmut and a group of
Scottish scientists announced that they had successfully cloned a sheep named Dolly.

If you stood Dolly beside a "naturally" conceived sheep, you wouldn't notice any differences
between the two. In fact, to pinpoint the only major distinguishing factor between the two, you'd
have to go back to the time of conception because Dolly's embryo developed without the
presence of sperm. Instead, Dolly began as a cell from another sheep that was fused via
electricity with a donor egg. Just one sheep -- no hanky-panky involved.

While Dolly's birth marked an incredible scientific breakthrough, it also set off questions in the
scientific and global community about what -- or who -- might be next to be "duplicated."
Cloning sheep and other nonhuman animals seemed more ethically benign to some than
potentially cloning people. In response to such concerns in the United States, President Clinton
signed a five-year moratorium on federal funding for human cloning the same year of Dolly's
arrival [source: Lamb].

Today, after more than a decade since Dolly, human cloning remains in its infancy. Although
cloning technology has improved, the process still has a slim success rate of 1 to 4 percent
[source: Burton]. That being said, science is headed in that direction -- pending governmental
restraints.

Scientists have cloned a variety of animals, including mice, sheep, pigs, cows and dogs. In 2006,
scientists cloned the first primate embryos of a rhesus monkey. Then, in early 2008, the FDA
officially deemed milk and meat products from cloned animals and their offspring safe to eat.

But what would human cloning involve, and how could you take sperm out of the reproductive -
equation?

Creating a Human Clone

In January 2001, a small consortium of scientists led by Panayiotis Zavos, a former University of
Kentucky professor, and Italian researcher Severino Antinori said that they planned to clone a
human in two years [source: Kirby]. At about the same time, news surfaced about an American
couple who planned to pay $500,000 to Las Vegas-based company Clonaid for a clone of their
deceased infant daughter [source: Clonaid]. Neither venture produced documented success.
 A breakdown of how cloning works.

Then, in 2004, South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-suk announced that he and his research team
had cloned 11 human embryos for the purpose of extracting stem cells. However, after reviewing
his work, a panel at Seoul National University concluded that his findings were false. There -
hasn't been any confirmed human clone created to date. When discussing cloning in the sense of
doing so to make a duplicate of an organism, we refer to it as reproductive cloning.

If human reproductive cloning proceeds, the primary method scientists will likely use is somatic
cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), which is the same procedure that was used to create Dolly the
sheep. Somatic cell nuclear transfer begins when doctors take the egg from a female donor and
remove its nucleus, creating an enucleated egg. A cell, which contains DNA, is taken from the
person who is being cloned. Then the enucleated egg is fused together with the cloning subject's
cell using electricity. This creates an embryo, which is implanted into a surrogate mother through
in vitro fertilization.

If the procedure is successful, then the surrogate mother will give birth to a baby that's a clone of
the cloning subject at the end of a normal gestation period. As mentioned before, the success rate
for this type of procedure is small, working in only one or two out of every 100 embryos. After
all, Dolly was the result of 277 previously failed attempts.
On the surface, human cloning may evoke a similar reaction to the space program's race to the
moon -- groundbreaking accomplishment, but what could we actually glean from it? Re-
engineering the human reproductive process has made many people nervous that cloning crosses
the ethical boundaries of science. But we can't fully evaluate the moral dilemma without first
addressing the potential benefits of human cloning.

Human Cloning Ethics

Surveys have shown that few Americans approve of cloning for reproductive purposes, although
more are open to therapeutic cloning [source: Burton]. The U.S. government has established
strategic roadblocks related to human cloning, although no federal ban exists. First, the
government won't fund research focused on human cloning for reproduction. Also, the FDA,
which regulates public cloning research, requires anyone in the United States attempting to clone
humans to first get its permission. President George W. Bush's appointed Council on Bioethics
unanimously opposed cloning for reproductive purposes.

Symphonie/Getty Images
Human reproductive cloning is banned in more than 50 countries.

Certain countries abroad have stricter standards, and more than 50 have legally banned research
efforts on reproductive human cloning [source: Medical Devices & Surgical Technology]. In
Japan, human cloning is a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison. England has allowed
cloning human embryos for therapeutic use only. Many individual states have also passed laws
restricting cloning.

While legal restrictions are one deterrent to pursuing human cloning at this time, some scientists
believe today's technology just isn't ready to be tested on humans. Ian Wilmut, one of Dolly's co-
creators, has even said that human cloning projects would be irresponsible. Cloning technology
is still in its early stages, and nearly 98 percent of cloning efforts end in failure. The embryos are
either not suitable for implanting into the uterus, or die some time during gestation or shortly
after birth.

Those clones that do survive suffer from genetic abnormalities. Clone cells may age more
rapidly, shortening their lifespan, similar to what happened with Dolly. Some clones have been
born with defective hearts, lung problems, diabetes, blood vessel complications and
malfunctioning immune systems. One of the more famous cases involved a cloned sheep that
was born but suffered from chronic hyperventilation caused by malformed arteries leading to the
lungs.

Opponents of cloning point out that while we can euthanize defective clones of other animals, it's
morally problematic if this happens during the human cloning process. Advocates of cloning
respond that it's now easier to pick out defective embryos before they're implanted into the
mother. In 2005, the United Nations attempted to pass a global ban on human cloning, but was
unsuccessful due to disagreements over whether therapeutic cloning should be included. For
now, human cloning remains in a stalemate from both a scientific and public policy perspective
-- the future of human cloning will likely depend on which side gives in first.