For the cloning of human beings, see Human cloning. For other uses, see Cloning (disambiguation).

The sea anemone, Anthopleura elegantissima in process of cloning Cloning in biology is the process of producing similar populations of genetically identical individuals that occurs in nature when organisms such as bacteria, insects or plants reproduce asexually. Cloning in biotechnology refers to processes used to create copies of DNA fragments (molecular cloning), cells (cell cloning), or organisms. The term also refers to the production of multiple copies of a product such as digital media or software. The term clone is derived from , the Greek word for "trunk, branch", referring to the process whereby a new plant can be created from a twig. In horticulture, the spelling clon was used until the twentieth century; the final e came into use to indicate the vowel is a "long o" instead of a "short o".[1][2] Since the term entered the popular lexicon in a more general context, the spelling clone has been used exclusively. Main article: Molecular cloning Molecular cloning refers to the process of making multiple molecules. Cloning is commonly used to amplify DNA fragments containing whole genes, but it can also be used to amplify any DNA sequence such as promoters, non-coding sequences and randomly fragmented DNA. It is used in a wide array of biological experiments and practical applications ranging from genetic fingerprinting to large scale protein production. Occasionally, the term cloning is misleadingly used to refer to the identification of the chromosomal location of a gene associated with a particular phenotype of interest, such as in positional cloning. In practice, localization of the gene to a chromosome or genomic region does not necessarily enable one to isolate or amplify the relevant genomic sequence. To amplify any DNA sequence in a living organism, that sequence must be linked to an origin of replication, which is a sequence of DNA capable of directing the propagation of itself and any linked sequence. However, a number of other features are needed and a variety of specialised cloning vectors (small piece of DNA into which a foreign DNA fragment can be inserted) exist that allow protein expression, tagging, single stranded RNA and DNA production and a host of other manipulations. Cloning of any DNA fragment essentially involves four steps[3] 1. fragmentation - breaking apart a strand of DNA 2. ligation - gluing together pieces of DNA in a desired sequence 3. transfection - inserting the newly formed pieces of DNA into cells 4. screening/selection - selecting out the cells that were successfully transfected with the new DNA Although these steps are invariable among cloning procedures a number of alternative routes can be selected, these are summarized as a 'cloning strategy'.

Initially, the DNA of interest needs to be isolated to provide a DNA segment of suitable size. Subsequently, a ligation procedure is used where the amplified fragment is inserted into a vector (piece of DNA). The vector (which is frequently circular) is linearised using restriction enzymes, and incubated with the fragment of interest under appropriate conditions with an enzyme called DNA ligase. Following ligation the vector with the insert of interest is transfected into cells. A number of alternative techniques are available, such as chemical sensitivation of cells, electroporation, optical injection and biolistics. Finally, the transfected cells are cultured. As the aforementioned procedures are of particularly low efficiency, there is a need to identify the cells that have been successfully transfected with the vector construct containing the desired insertion sequence in the required orientation. Modern cloning vectors include selectable antibiotic resistance markers, which allow only cells in which the vector has been transfected, to grow. Additionally, the cloning vectors may contain colour selection markers, which provide blue/white screening (??-factor complementation) on X-gal medium. Nevertheless, these selection steps do not absolutely guarantee that the DNA insert is present in the cells obtained. Further investigation of the resulting colonies must be required to confirm that cloning was successful. This may be accomplished by means of PCR, restriction fragment analysis and/or DNA sequencing.

Cellular cloning
Unicellular organism
Cloning cell-line colonies using cloning rings Cloning a cell means to derive a population of cells from a single cell. In the case of unicellular organisms such as bacteria and yeast, this process is remarkably simple and essentially only requires the inoculation of the appropriate medium. However, in the case of cell cultures from multi-cellular organisms, cell cloning is an arduous task as these cells will not readily grow in standard media. A useful tissue culture technique used to clone distinct lineages of cell lines involves the use of cloning rings (cylinders).[4] According to this technique, a single-cell suspension of cells that have been exposed to a mutagenic agent or drug used to drive selection is plated at high dilution to create isolated colonies; each arising from a single and potentially clonal distinct cell. At an early growth stage when colonies consist of only a few of cells, sterile polystyrene rings (cloning rings), which have been dipped in grease are placed over an individual colony and a small amount of trypsin is added. Cloned cells are collected from inside the ring and transferred to a new vessel for further growth.

[edit] Cloning in stem cell research

Main article: Somatic cell nuclear transfer Somatic cell nuclear transfer, known as SCNT, can also be used to create embryos for research or therapeutic purposes. The most likely purpose for this is to produce embryos for use in stem cell research. This process is also called "research cloning" or "therapeutic cloning." The goal is

not to create cloned human beings (called "reproductive cloning"), but rather to harvest stem cells that can be used to study human development and to potentially treat disease. While a clonal human blastocyst has been created, stem cell lines are yet to be isolated from a clonal source.[5]

[edit] Organism cloning

Further information: Asexual reproduction Organism cloning (also called reproductive cloning) refers to the procedure of creating a new multicellular organism, genetically identical to another. In essence this form of cloning is an asexual method of reproduction, where fertilization or inter-gamete contact does not take place. Asexual reproduction is a naturally occurring phenomenon in many species, including most plants (see vegetative reproduction) and some insects. Scientists have made some major achievements with cloning, including the asexual reproduction of sheep and cows. There is a lot of ethical debate over whether or not cloning should be used. However, cloning, or asexual propagation,[6] has been common practice in the horticultural world for hundreds of years.

[edit] Horticultural
The term clone is used in horticulture to refer to descendants of a single plant which were produced by vegetative reproduction or apomixis. Many horticultural plant cultivars are clones, having been derived from a single individual, multiplied by some process other than sexual reproduction. As an example, some European cultivars of grapes represent clones that have been propagated for over two millennia. Other examples are potato and banana. Grafting can be regarded as cloning, since all the shoots and branches coming from the graft are genetically a clone of a single individual, but this particular kind of cloning has not come under ethical scrutiny and is generally treated as an entirely different kind of operation. Many trees, shrubs, vines, ferns and other herbaceous perennials form clonal colonies. Parts of a large clonal colony often become detached from the parent, termed fragmentation, to form separate individuals. Some plants also form seeds asexually, termed apomixis, e.g. dandelion.

[edit] Parthenogenesis
Clonal derivation exists in nature in some animal species and is referred to as parthenogenesis (reproduction of an organism by itself without a mate). This is an asexual form of reproduction that is only found in females of some insects, crustaceans and lizards. The growth and development occurs without fertilization by a male. In plants, parthenogenesis means the development of an embryo from an unfertilized egg cell, and is a component process of apomixis. In species that use the XY sex-determination system, the offspring will always be female. An example is the "Little Fire Ant" (Wasmannia auropunctata), which is native to Central and South America but has spread throughout many tropical environments.

[edit] Artificial cloning of organisms

Artificial cloning of organisms may also be called reproductive cloning. [edit] Methods Reproductive cloning generally uses "somatic cell nuclear transfer" (SCNT) to create animals that are genetically identical. This process entails the transfer of a nucleus from a donor adult cell (somatic cell) to an egg that has no nucleus. If the egg begins to divide normally it is transferred into the uterus of the surrogate mother. Such clones are not strictly identical since the somatic cells may contain mutations in their nuclear DNA. Additionally, the mitochondria in the cytoplasm also contains DNA and during SCNT this DNA is wholly from the donor egg, thus the mitochondrial genome is not the same as that of the nucleus donor cell from which it was produced. This may have important implications for cross-species nuclear transfer in which nuclear-mitochondrial incompatibilities may lead to death. Artificial embryo splitting or embryo twinning may also be used as a method of cloning, where an embryo is split in the maturation before embryo transfer. It is optimally performed at the 6- to 8-cell stage, where it can be used as an expansion of IVF to increase the number of available embryos.[7] If both embryos are successful, it gives rise to monozygotic (identical) twins. [edit] Dolly the Sheep Main article:Dolly the Shee Dolly, a Finn-Dorset ewe, was the first mammal to have been successfully cloned from an adult cell. She was cloned at the Roslin Institute in Scotland and lived there from her birth in 1996 until her death in 2003 when she was six. Her stuffed remains were placed at Edinburgh's Royal Museum, part of the National Museums of Scotland.[8] Dolly was publicly significant because the effort showed that the genetic material from a specific adult cell, programmed to express only a distinct subset of its genes, can be reprogrammed to grow an entirely new organism. Before this demonstration, it had been shown by John Gurdon that nuclei from differentiated cells could give rise to an entire organism after transplantation into an enucleated egg.[9] However, this concept was not yet demonstrated in a mamallian system. Cloning Dolly the sheep had a low success rate per fertilized egg; she was born after 237 eggs were used to create 29 embryos, which only produced three lambs at birth, only one of which lived. Seventy calves have been created and one third of them died young; Prometea took 277 attempts. Notably, although the first clones were frogs, no adult cloned frog has yet been produced from a somatic adult nucleus donor cell. There were early claims that Dolly the Sheep had pathologies resembling accelerated aging. Scientists speculated that Dolly's death in 2003 was related to the shortening of telomeres, DNAprotein complexes that protect the end of linear chromosomes. However, other researchers, including Ian Wilmut who led the team that successfully cloned Dolly, argue that Dolly's early death due to respiratory infection was unrelated to deficiencies with the cloning process.

Main article: Human cloning Human cloning is the creation of a genetically identical copy of an existing or previously existing human. The term is generally used to refer to artificial human cloning; human clones in the form of identical twins are commonplace, with their cloning occurring during the natural process of reproduction. There are two commonly discussed types of human cloning: therapeutic cloning and reproductive cloning. Therapeutic cloning involves cloning adult cells for use in medicine and is an active area of research. Reproductive cloning would involve making cloned humans. A third type of cloning called replacement cloning is a theoretical possibility, and would be a combination of therapeutic and reproductive cloning. Replacement cloning would entail the replacement of an extensively damaged, failed, or failing body through cloning followed by whole or partial brain transplant. The various forms of human cloning are controversial.[27] There have been numerous demands for all progress in the human cloning field to be halted. Most scientific, governmental and religious organizations oppose reproductive cloning. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and other scientific organizations have made public statements suggesting that human reproductive cloning be banned until safety issues are resolved.[28] Serious ethical concerns have been raised by the future possibility of harvesting organs from clones.[citation needed] Some people have considered the idea of growing organs separately from a human organism - in doing this, a new organ supply could be established without the moral implications of harvesting them from humans. Research is also being done on the idea of growing organs that are biologically acceptable to the human body inside of other organisms, such as pigs or cows, then transplanting them to humans, a form of xenotransplantation. The first hybrid human clone was created in November 1998, by Advanced Cell Technologies.[29] It was created from a man's leg cell, and a cow's egg whose DNA was removed. It was destroyed after 12 days. Since a normal embryo implants at 14 days, Dr Robert Lanza, ACT's director of tissue engineering, told the Daily Mail newspaper that the embryo could not be seen as a person before 14 days. While making an embryo, which may have resulted in a complete human had it been allowed to come to term, according to ACT: "[ACT's] aim was 'therapeutic cloning' not 'reproductive cloning'" On January, 2008, Wood and Andrew French, Stemagen's chief scientific officer in California, announced that they successfully created the first 5 mature human embryos using DNA from adult skin cells, aiming to provide a source of viable embryonic stem cells. Dr. Samuel Wood and a colleague donated skin cells, and DNA from those cells was transferred to human eggs. It is not clear if the embryos produced would have been capable of further development, but Dr. Wood stated that if that were possible, using the technology for reproductive cloning would be both unethical and illegal. The 5 cloned embryos, created in Stemagen Corporation lab, in La Jolla, were destroyed.[30] [edit] Ethical issues of cloning Main article: Ethics of cloning

Because of recent technological advancements, the cloning of animals (and potentially humans) has been an issue. The Catholic Church and many religious organizations oppose all forms of cloning,[citation needed] on the grounds that life begins at conception. Judaism does not equate life with conception and,[citation needed] though some question the wisdom of cloning, Orthodox rabbis generally find no firm reason in Jewish law and ethics to object to cloning.[citation needed] From the standpoint of classical liberalism, concerns also exist regarding the protection of the identity of the individual and the right to protect one's genetic identity. Gregory Stock is a scientist and outspoken critic against restrictions on cloning research.[31] Bioethicist Gregory Pence also attacks the idea of criminalizing attempts to clone humans.[citation
needed]

The social implications of an artificial human production scheme were famously explored in Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World. On December 28, 2006, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the consumption of meat and other products from cloned animals.[32] Cloned-animal products were said to be virtually indistinguishable from the non-cloned animals. Furthermore, companies would not be required to provide labels informing the consumer that the meat comes from a cloned animal.[33] Critics have raised objections to the FDA's approval of cloned-animal products for human consumption, arguing that the FDA's research was inadequate, inappropriately limited, and of questionable scientific validity.[34][35][36] Several consumer-advocate groups are working to encourage a tracking program that would allow consumers to become more aware of clonedanimal products within their food.[37] Joseph Mendelson, legal director of the Center for Food Safety, said that cloned food still should be labeled since safety and ethical issues about it remain questionable. Carol Tucker Foreman, director of food policy at the Consumer Federation of America, stated that FDA does not consider the fact that the results of some studies revealed that cloned animals have increased rates of mortality and deformity at birth. [edit] Cloning extinct and endangered species Cloning, or more precisely, the reconstruction of functional DNA from extinct species has, for decades, been a dream of some scientists. The possible implications of this were dramatized in the best-selling novel by Michael Crichton and high budget Hollywood thriller Jurassic Park. In real life, one of the most anticipated targets for cloning was once the Woolly Mammoth, but attempts to extract DNA from frozen mammoths have been unsuccessful, though a joint RussoJapanese team is currently working toward this goal. And in January 2011, it was reported by Yomiuri Shimbun that a team of scientists headed by Akira Iritani of Kyoto University had built upon research by Dr. Wakayama, saying that they will extract DNA from a mammoth carcass that had been preserved in a Russian laboratory and insert it into the egg cells of an African

elephant in hopes of producing a mammoth embryo. The researchers said they hoped to produce a baby mammoth within six years.[38] In 2001, a cow named Bessie gave birth to a cloned Asian gaur, an endangered species, but the calf died after two days. In 2003, a banteng was successfully cloned, followed by three African wildcats from a thawed frozen embryo. These successes provided hope that similar techniques (using surrogate mothers of another species) might be used to clone extinct species. Anticipating this possibility, tissue samples from the last bucardo (Pyrenean Ibex) were frozen in liquid nitrogen immediately after it died in 2000. Researchers are also considering cloning endangered species such as the giant panda, ocelot, and cheetah. The "Frozen Zoo" at the San Diego Zoo now stores frozen tissue from the world's rarest and most endangered species.[39][40] In 2002, geneticists at the Australian Museum announced that they had replicated DNA of the Thylacine (Tasmanian Tiger), extinct about 65 years previous, using polymerase chain reaction. [41] However, on February 15, 2005 the museum announced that it was stopping the project after tests showed the specimens' DNA had been too badly degraded by the (ethanol) preservative. On 15 May 2005 it was announced that the Thylacine project would be revived, with new participation from researchers in New South Wales and Victoria. In January 2009, for the first time, an extinct animal, the Pyrenean ibex mentioned above was cloned, at the Centre of Food Technology and Research of Aragon, using the preserved DNA of the skin samples from 2001 and domestic goat egg-cells. (The ibex died shortly after birth due to physical defects in its lungs.) [42] One of the continuing obstacles in the attempt to clone extinct species is the need for nearly perfect DNA. Cloning from a single specimen could not create a viable breeding population in sexually reproducing animals. Furthermore, even if males and females were to be cloned, the question would remain open whether they would be viable at all in the absence of parents that could teach or show them their natural behavior. Cloning endangered species is a highly ideological issue. Many conservation biologists and environmentalists vehemently oppose cloning endangered speciesmainly because they think it may deter donations to help preserve natural habitat and wild animal populations. The "rule-ofthumb" in animal conservation is that, if it is still feasible to conserve habitat and viable wild populations, breeding in captivity should not be undertaken in isolation. In a 2006 review, David Ehrenfeld concluded that cloning in animal conservation is an experimental technology that, at its state in 2006, could not be expected to work except by pure chance and utterly failed a cost-benefit analysis.[43] Furthermore, he said, it is likely to siphon funds from established and working projects and does not address any of the issues underlying animal extinction (such as habitat destruction, hunting or other overexploitation, and an impoverished gene pool). While cloning technologies are well-established and used on a regular basis in plant conservation, care must be taken to ensure genetic diversity. He concluded: Vertebrate cloning poses little risk to the environment, but it can consume scarce conservation resources, and its chances of success in preserving species seem poor. To date, the conservation benefits of transgenics and vertebrate cloning remain entirely theoretical, but many of the risks are known and documented. Conservation biologists should devote their research and energies to

the established methods of conservation, none of which require transgenics or vertebrate cloning.
[43]

[edit] In science fiction

Cloning has been used in countless science fiction works throughout the years. Human cloning is usually the most popular kind that is used in these particular works, mainly due to fact that it brings up controversial questions of identity.[44] For example, in C.J. Cherryhs novel Cyteen, and in Aldous Huxleys novel Brave New World, human cloning is a major plot device that not only drives the story along but also makes the reader think critically about what identity means. Main article: Molecular cloning Molecular cloning refers to the process of making multiple molecules. Cloning is commonly used to amplify DNA fragments containing whole genes, but it can also be used to amplify any DNA sequence such as promoters, non-coding sequences and randomly fragmented DNA. It is used in a wide array of biological experiments and practical applications ranging from genetic fingerprinting to large scale protein production. Occasionally, the term cloning is misleadingly used to refer to the identification of the chromosomal location of a gene associated with a particular phenotype of interest, such as in positional cloning. In practice, localization of the gene to a chromosome or genomic region does not necessarily enable one to isolate or amplify the relevant genomic sequence. To amplify any DNA sequence in a living organism, that sequence must be linked to an origin of replication, which is a sequence of DNA capable of directing the propagation of itself and any linked sequence. However, a number of other features are needed and a variety of specialised cloning vectors (small piece of DNA into which a foreign DNA fragment can be inserted) exist that allow protein expression, tagging, single stranded RNA and DNA production and a host of other manipulations. Cloning of any DNA fragment essentially involves four steps[3] 1. fragmentation - breaking apart a strand of DNA 2. ligation - gluing together pieces of DNA in a desired sequence 3. transfection - inserting the newly formed pieces of DNA into cells 4. screening/selection - selecting out the cells that were successfully transfected with the new DNA Although these steps are invariable among cloning procedures a number of alternative routes can be selected, these are summarized as a 'cloning strategy'. Initially, the DNA of interest needs to be isolated to provide a DNA segment of suitable size. Subsequently, a ligation procedure is used where the amplified fragment is inserted into a vector (piece of DNA). The vector (which is frequently circular) is linearised using restriction enzymes, and incubated with the fragment of interest under appropriate conditions with an enzyme called DNA ligase. Following ligation the vector with the insert of interest is transfected into cells. A number of alternative techniques are available, such as chemical sensitivation of cells, electroporation, optical injection and biolistics. Finally, the transfected cells are cultured. As the

aforementioned procedures are of particularly low efficiency, there is a need to identify the cells that have been successfully transfected with the vector construct containing the desired insertion sequence in the required orientation. Modern cloning vectors include selectable antibiotic resistance markers, which allow only cells in which the vector has been transfected, to grow. Additionally, the cloning vectors may contain colour selection markers, which provide blue/white screening (??-factor complementation) on X-gal medium. Nevertheless, these selection steps do not absolutely guarantee that the DNA insert is present in the cells obtained. Further investigation of the resulting colonies must be required to confirm that cloning was successful. This may be accomplished by means of PCR, restriction fragment analysis and/or DNA sequencing.

[edit] Cellular cloning

[edit] Unicellular organisms

Cloning cell-line colonies using cloning rings Cloning a cell means to derive a population of cells from a single cell. In the case of unicellular organisms such as bacteria and yeast, this process is remarkably simple and essentially only requires the inoculation of the appropriate medium. However, in the case of cell cultures from multi-cellular organisms, cell cloning is an arduous task as these cells will not readily grow in standard media. A useful tissue culture technique used to clone distinct lineages of cell lines involves the use of cloning rings (cylinders).[4] According to this technique, a single-cell suspension of cells that have been exposed to a mutagenic agent or drug used to drive selection is plated at high dilution to create isolated colonies; each arising from a single and potentially clonal distinct cell. At an early growth stage when colonies consist of only a few of cells, sterile polystyrene rings (cloning rings), which have been dipped in grease are placed over an individual colony and a small amount of trypsin is added. Cloned cells are collected from inside the ring and transferred to a new vessel for further growth.

[edit] Cloning in stem cell research

Main article: Somatic cell nuclear transfer

Somatic cell nuclear transfer, known as SCNT, can also be used to create embryos for research or therapeutic purposes. The most likely purpose for this is to produce embryos for use in stem cell research. This process is also called "research cloning" or "therapeutic cloning." The goal is not to create cloned human beings (called "reproductive cloning"), but rather to harvest stem cells that can be used to study human development and to potentially treat disease. While a clonal human blastocyst has been created, stem cell lines are yet to be isolated from a clonal source.[5]

[edit] Organism cloning

Further information: Asexual reproduction Organism cloning (also called reproductive cloning) refers to the procedure of creating a new multicellular organism, genetically identical to another. In essence this form of cloning is an asexual method of reproduction, where fertilization or inter-gamete contact does not take place. Asexual reproduction is a naturally occurring phenomenon in many species, including most plants (see vegetative reproduction) and some insects. Scientists have made some major achievements with cloning, including the asexual reproduction of sheep and cows. There is a lot of ethical debate over whether or not cloning should be used. However, cloning, or asexual propagation,[6] has been common practice in the horticultural world for hundreds of years.

[edit] Horticultural
The term clone is used in horticulture to refer to descendants of a single plant which were produced by vegetative reproduction or apomixis. Many horticultural plant cultivars are clones, having been derived from a single individual, multiplied by some process other than sexual reproduction. As an example, some European cultivars of grapes represent clones that have been propagated for over two millennia. Other examples are potato and banana. Grafting can be regarded as cloning, since all the shoots and branches coming from the graft are genetically a clone of a single individual, but this particular kind of cloning has not come under ethical scrutiny and is generally treated as an entirely different kind of operation. Many trees, shrubs, vines, ferns and other herbaceous perennials form clonal colonies. Parts of a large clonal colony often become detached from the parent, termed fragmentation, to form separate individuals. Some plants also form seeds asexually, termed apomixis, e.g. dandelion.

[edit] Parthenogenesis
Clonal derivation exists in nature in some animal species and is referred to as parthenogenesis (reproduction of an organism by itself without a mate). This is an asexual form of reproduction that is only found in females of some insects, crustaceans and lizards. The growth and development occurs without fertilization by a male. In plants, parthenogenesis means the development of an embryo from an unfertilized egg cell, and is a component process of apomixis. In species that use the XY sex-determination system, the offspring will always be female. An example is the "Little Fire Ant" (Wasmannia auropunctata), which is native to Central and South America but has spread throughout many tropical environments.

[edit] Artificial cloning of organisms

Artificial cloning of organisms may also be called reproductive cloning. [edit] Methods Reproductive cloning generally uses "somatic cell nuclear transfer" (SCNT) to create animals that are genetically identical. This process entails the transfer of a nucleus from a donor adult cell (somatic cell) to an egg that has no nucleus. If the egg begins to divide normally it is transferred into the uterus of the surrogate mother. Such clones are not strictly identical since the somatic cells may contain mutations in their nuclear DNA. Additionally, the mitochondria in the cytoplasm also contains DNA and during SCNT this DNA is wholly from the donor egg, thus the mitochondrial genome is not the same as that of the nucleus donor cell from which it was produced. This may have important implications for cross-species nuclear transfer in which nuclear-mitochondrial incompatibilities may lead to death. Artificial embryo splitting or embryo twinning may also be used as a method of cloning, where an embryo is split in the maturation before embryo transfer. It is optimally performed at the 6- to 8-cell stage, where it can be used as an expansion of IVF to increase the number of available embryos.[7] If both embryos are successful, it gives rise to monozygotic (identical) twins. [edit] Dolly the Sheep Main article: Dolly the Sheep

Dolly, a Finn-Dorset ewe, was the first mammal to have been successfully cloned from an adult cell. She was cloned at the Roslin Institute in Scotland and lived there from her birth in 1996

until her death in 2003 when she was six. Her stuffed remains were placed at Edinburgh's Royal Museum, part of the National Museums of Scotland.[8] Dolly was publicly significant because the effort showed that the genetic material from a specific adult cell, programmed to express only a distinct subset of its genes, can be reprogrammed to grow an entirely new organism. Before this demonstration, it had been shown by John Gurdon that nuclei from differentiated cells could give rise to an entire organism after transplantation into an enucleated egg.[9] However, this concept was not yet demonstrated in a mamallian system. Cloning Dolly the sheep had a low success rate per fertilized egg; she was born after 237 eggs were used to create 29 embryos, which only produced three lambs at birth, only one of which lived. Seventy calves have been created and one third of them died young; Prometea took 277 attempts. Notably, although the first clones were frogs, no adult cloned frog has yet been produced from a somatic adult nucleus donor cell. There were early claims that Dolly the Sheep had pathologies resembling accelerated aging. Scientists speculated that Dolly's death in 2003 was related to the shortening of telomeres, DNAprotein complexes that protect the end of linear chromosomes. However, other researchers, including Ian Wilmut who led the team that successfully cloned Dolly, argue that Dolly's early death due to respiratory infection was unrelated to deficiencies with the cloning process. [edit] Water buffalo On September 15, 2007, the Philippines announced its development of Southeast Asias first cloned water buffalo. The Philippine Council for Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resources Research and Development (PCARRD), under the Department of Science and Technology in Los Baos, Laguna approved this project.[10] [edit] Species cloned Further information: List of animals that have been cloned The modern cloning techniques involving nuclear transfer have been successfully performed on several species. Landmark experiments[clarification needed] in chronological order:

Tadpole: (1952) Many scientists questioned whether cloning had actually occurred and unpublished experiments by other labs were not able to reproduce the reported results.
[citation needed]

Carp: (1963) In China, embryologist Tong Dizhou produced the world's first cloned fish by inserting the DNA from a cell of a male carp into an egg from a female carp. He published the findings in a Chinese science journal.[11] Mice: (1986) A mouse was the first mammal successfully cloned from an early embryonic cell. Soviet scientists Chaylakhyan, Veprencev, Sviridova, and Nikitin had the mouse "Masha" cloned. Research was published in the magazine "Biofizika" volume II, issue 5 of 1987.[clarification needed][12]

Sheep: (1996) From early embryonic cells by Steen Willadsen. Megan and Morag[13] cloned from differentiated embryonic cells in June 1995 and Dolly the sheep from a somatic cell in 1997.[14] Rhesus Monkey: Tetra (January 2000) from embryo splitting[15][clarification needed][16] Gaur: (2001) was the first endangered species cloned.[17] Cattle: Alpha and Beta (males, 2001) and (2005) Brazil[18] Cat: CopyCat "CC" (female, late 2001), Little Nicky, 2004, was the first cat cloned for commercial reasons[19] Dog: Snuppy, a male Afghan hound was the first cloned dog (2005).[20] Rat: Ralph, the first cloned rat (2003)[21] Mule: Idaho Gem, a john mule born 4 May 2003, was the first horse-family clone.[22] Horse: Prometea, a Haflinger female born 28 May 2003, was the first horse clone.[23] Water Buffalo: Samrupa was the first cloned water buffalo. It was born on February 6, 2009, at India's Karnal National Diary Research Institute but died five days later due to lung infection.[24] Pyrenean Ibex (2009) was the first extinct animal (extinct 2000) to be cloned back to life; the clone lived for seven minutes before dying of lung defects.[25] Camel: (2009) Injaz, is the first cloned camel.[26]

[edit] Human cloning Main article: Human cloning Human cloning is the creation of a genetically identical copy of an existing or previously existing human. The term is generally used to refer to artificial human cloning; human clones in the form of identical twins are commonplace, with their cloning occurring during the natural process of reproduction. There are two commonly discussed types of human cloning: therapeutic cloning and reproductive cloning. Therapeutic cloning involves cloning adult cells for use in medicine and is an active area of research. Reproductive cloning would involve making cloned humans. A third type of cloning called replacement cloning is a theoretical possibility, and would be a combination of therapeutic and reproductive cloning. Replacement cloning would entail the replacement of an extensively damaged, failed, or failing body through cloning followed by whole or partial brain transplant. The various forms of human cloning are controversial.[27] There have been numerous demands for all progress in the human cloning field to be halted. Most scientific, governmental and religious organizations oppose reproductive cloning. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and other scientific organizations have made public statements suggesting that human reproductive cloning be banned until safety issues are resolved.[28] Serious ethical concerns have been raised by the future possibility of harvesting organs from clones.[citation needed] Some people have considered the idea of growing organs separately from a human organism - in doing this, a new organ supply could be established without the moral implications of harvesting them from humans. Research is also being done on the idea of growing organs that are biologically acceptable to the human body inside of other organisms, such as pigs or cows, then transplanting them to humans, a form of xenotransplantation.

The first hybrid human clone was created in November 1998, by Advanced Cell Technologies.[29] It was created from a man's leg cell, and a cow's egg whose DNA was removed. It was destroyed after 12 days. Since a normal embryo implants at 14 days, Dr Robert Lanza, ACT's director of tissue engineering, told the Daily Mail newspaper that the embryo could not be seen as a person before 14 days. While making an embryo, which may have resulted in a complete human had it been allowed to come to term, according to ACT: "[ACT's] aim was 'therapeutic cloning' not 'reproductive cloning'" On January, 2008, Wood and Andrew French, Stemagen's chief scientific officer in California, announced that they successfully created the first 5 mature human embryos using DNA from adult skin cells, aiming to provide a source of viable embryonic stem cells. Dr. Samuel Wood and a colleague donated skin cells, and DNA from those cells was transferred to human eggs. It is not clear if the embryos produced would have been capable of further development, but Dr. Wood stated that if that were possible, using the technology for reproductive cloning would be both unethical and illegal. The 5 cloned embryos, created in Stemagen Corporation lab, in La Jolla, were destroyed.[30] [edit] Ethical issues of cloning Main article: Ethics of cloning Because of recent technological advancements, the cloning of animals (and potentially humans) has been an issue. The Catholic Church and many religious organizations oppose all forms of cloning,[citation needed] on the grounds that life begins at conception. Judaism does not equate life with conception and,[citation needed] though some question the wisdom of cloning, Orthodox rabbis generally find no firm reason in Jewish law and ethics to object to cloning.[citation needed] From the standpoint of classical liberalism, concerns also exist regarding the protection of the identity of the individual and the right to protect one's genetic identity. Gregory Stock is a scientist and outspoken critic against restrictions on cloning research.[31] Bioethicist Gregory Pence also attacks the idea of criminalizing attempts to clone humans.[citation
needed]

The social implications of an artificial human production scheme were famously explored in Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World. On December 28, 2006, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the consumption of meat and other products from cloned animals.[32] Cloned-animal products were said to be virtually indistinguishable from the non-cloned animals. Furthermore, companies would not be required to provide labels informing the consumer that the meat comes from a cloned animal.[33] Critics have raised objections to the FDA's approval of cloned-animal products for human consumption, arguing that the FDA's research was inadequate, inappropriately limited, and of questionable scientific validity.[34][35][36] Several consumer-advocate groups are working to

encourage a tracking program that would allow consumers to become more aware of clonedanimal products within their food.[37] Joseph Mendelson, legal director of the Center for Food Safety, said that cloned food still should be labeled since safety and ethical issues about it remain questionable. Carol Tucker Foreman, director of food policy at the Consumer Federation of America, stated that FDA does not consider the fact that the results of some studies revealed that cloned animals have increased rates of mortality and deformity at birth. [edit] Cloning extinct and endangered species Cloning, or more precisely, the reconstruction of functional DNA from extinct species has, for decades, been a dream of some scientists. The possible implications of this were dramatized in the best-selling novel by Michael Crichton and high budget Hollywood thriller Jurassic Park. In real life, one of the most anticipated targets for cloning was once the Woolly Mammoth, but attempts to extract DNA from frozen mammoths have been unsuccessful, though a joint RussoJapanese team is currently working toward this goal. And in January 2011, it was reported by Yomiuri Shimbun that a team of scientists headed by Akira Iritani of Kyoto University had built upon research by Dr. Wakayama, saying that they will extract DNA from a mammoth carcass that had been preserved in a Russian laboratory and insert it into the egg cells of an African elephant in hopes of producing a mammoth embryo. The researchers said they hoped to produce a baby mammoth within six years.[38] In 2001, a cow named Bessie gave birth to a cloned Asian gaur, an endangered species, but the calf died after two days. In 2003, a banteng was successfully cloned, followed by three African wildcats from a thawed frozen embryo. These successes provided hope that similar techniques (using surrogate mothers of another species) might be used to clone extinct species. Anticipating this possibility, tissue samples from the last bucardo (Pyrenean Ibex) were frozen in liquid nitrogen immediately after it died in 2000. Researchers are also considering cloning endangered species such as the giant panda, ocelot, and cheetah. The "Frozen Zoo" at the San Diego Zoo now stores frozen tissue from the world's rarest and most endangered species.[39][40] In 2002, geneticists at the Australian Museum announced that they had replicated DNA of the Thylacine (Tasmanian Tiger), extinct about 65 years previous, using polymerase chain reaction. [41] However, on February 15, 2005 the museum announced that it was stopping the project after tests showed the specimens' DNA had been too badly degraded by the (ethanol) preservative. On 15 May 2005 it was announced that the Thylacine project would be revived, with new participation from researchers in New South Wales and Victoria. In January 2009, for the first time, an extinct animal, the Pyrenean ibex mentioned above was cloned, at the Centre of Food Technology and Research of Aragon, using the preserved DNA of the skin samples from 2001 and domestic goat egg-cells. (The ibex died shortly after birth due to physical defects in its lungs.) [42] One of the continuing obstacles in the attempt to clone extinct species is the need for nearly perfect DNA. Cloning from a single specimen could not create a viable breeding population in sexually reproducing animals. Furthermore, even if males and

females were to be cloned, the question would remain open whether they would be viable at all in the absence of parents that could teach or show them their natural behavior. Cloning endangered species is a highly ideological issue. Many conservation biologists and environmentalists vehemently oppose cloning endangered speciesmainly because they think it may deter donations to help preserve natural habitat and wild animal populations. The "rule-ofthumb" in animal conservation is that, if it is still feasible to conserve habitat and viable wild populations, breeding in captivity should not be undertaken in isolation. In a 2006 review, David Ehrenfeld concluded that cloning in animal conservation is an experimental technology that, at its state in 2006, could not be expected to work except by pure chance and utterly failed a cost-benefit analysis.[43] Furthermore, he said, it is likely to siphon funds from established and working projects and does not address any of the issues underlying animal extinction (such as habitat destruction, hunting or other overexploitation, and an impoverished gene pool). While cloning technologies are well-established and used on a regular basis in plant conservation, care must be taken to ensure genetic diversity. He concluded: Vertebrate cloning poses little risk to the environment, but it can consume scarce conservation resources, and its chances of success in preserving species seem poor. To date, the conservation benefits of transgenics and vertebrate cloning remain entirely theoretical, but many of the risks are known and documented. Conservation biologists should devote their research and energies to the established methods of conservation, none of which require transgenics or vertebrate cloning.
[43]

Cloning has been used in countless science fiction works throughout the years. Human cloning is usually the most popular kind that is used in these particular works, mainly due to fact that it brings up controversial questions of identity.[44] For example, in C.J. Cherryhs novel Cyteen, and in Aldous Huxleys novel Brave New World, human cloning is a major plot device that not only drives the story along but also makes the reader think critically about what identity means.

History
Although the possibility of cloning humans has been the subject of speculation for much of the twentieth century, scientists and policy makers began to take the prospect seriously in the 1960s. Nobel Prize winning geneticist Joshua Lederberg advocated for cloning and genetic engineering in a seminal article in the American Naturalist in 1966 and again, the following year, in the Washington Post.[1] He sparked a debate with conservative bioethicist Leon Kass, who wrote at the time that "the programmed reproduction of man will, in fact, dehumanize him." Another Nobel Laureate, James D. Watson, publicized the potential and the perils of cloning in his Atlantic Monthly essay, "Moving Toward the Clonal Man", in 1971.[2] The technology of cloning mammals, although far from reliable, has reached the point where many scientists are knowledgeable, the literature is readily available, and the implementation of the technology is not very expensive compared to many other scientific processes. For that reason Lewis D. Eigen has argued that human cloning attempts will be made in the next few years and may well have been already begun.[3]

"By waiting until the first clone is among us or about to be born, we complicate the problem immensely and guarantee that we will not be able to have the national and international conversation and debate to arrive at particularly good decisions like using protection."[3]

[edit] Notable cloning attempts and claims

Dr. Panayiotis Zavos, an American fertility doctor, revealed on 17 January 2004 at a London press conference that he had transferred a freshly cloned embryo into a 35-yearold woman. On 4 February 2004, it emerged that the attempt had not worked and the woman did not become pregnant.[4][5]

[edit] Ethical implications

See also: Ethics of cloning Advocates of human therapeutic cloning believe the practice could provide genetically identical cells for regenerative medicine, and tissues and organs for transplantation. Such cells, tissues and organs would neither trigger an immune response nor require the use of Immunosuppressive drugs[6] Both basic research and therapeutic development for serious diseases such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes, as well as improvements in burn treatment and reconstructive and cosmetic surgery, are areas that might benefit from such new technology.[7] Proponents claim that human reproductive cloning would also produce benefits. Severino Antinori and Panayiotis Zavos hope to create a fertility treatment that allows parents who are both infertile to have children with at least some of their DNA in their offspring.[8] Some scientists, including Dr. Richard Seed, suggest that human cloning might obviate the human aging process.[9] Dr. Preston Estep has suggested the terms "replacement cloning" to describe the generation of a clone of a previously living person, and "persistence cloning" to describe the production of a cloned body for the purpose of obviating aging, although he maintains that such procedures currently should be considered science fiction[citation needed] and current cloning techniques risk producing a prematurely aged child.[10] In Aubrey de Grey's proposed SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence), one of the considered options to repair the cell depletion related to cellular senescence is to grow replacement tissues from stem cells harvested from a cloned embryo. Human cloning also raises implications of a socio-ethical nature, particularly concerning the role that cloning might play in changing the shape of family structure by complicating the role of parenting within a family of convoluted kinship relations. For example, a female DNA donor would be the clone's genetic twin, rather than mother, complicating the genetic and social relationships between mother and child as well as the relationships between other family members and the clone.[11]

United Nations

On December 14, 2001, the United Nations General Assembly began elaborating an international convention against the reproductive cloning of humans. A broad coalition of States, including Spain, Italy, the Philippines, the United States, Costa Rica and the Holy See sought to extend the debate to ban all forms of human cloning, noting that, in their view, therapeutic human cloning violates human dignity. Costa Rica proposed the adoption of an international convention to ban all forms of Human Cloning. Unable to reach a consensus on a binding convention, in March 2005 a non-binding United Nations Declaration on Human Cloning calling for the ban of all forms of Human Cloning contrary to human dignity, was finally adopted.[12]

[edit] Australia
Australia had prohibited human cloning,[13] though as of December 2006, a bill legalising therapeutic cloning and the creation of human embryos for stem cell research passed the House of Representatives. Within certain regulatory limits, and subject to the effect of state legislation, therapeutic cloning is now legal in some parts of Australia.

[edit] European Union

The European Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine prohibits human cloning in one of its additional protocols, but this protocol has been ratified only by Greece, Spain and Portugal. The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union explicitly prohibits reproductive human cloning. The charter is legally binding for the institutions of the European Union under the Treaty of Lisbon.

[edit] United States

In 1998, 2001, 2004 and 2007, the United States House of Representatives voted whether to ban all human cloning, both reproductive and therapeutic. Each time, divisions in the Senate over therapeutic cloning prevented either competing proposal (a ban on both forms or reproductive cloning only) from passing. On Mar 10, 2010 a bill (HR 4808) was introduced with a section banning federal funding for human cloning.[14] Such a law, if passed, would not prevent research from occurring in private institutions (such as universities) that have both private and federal funding. There are currently no federal laws in the United States which ban cloning completely, and any such laws would raise difficult Constitutional questions similar to the issues raised by abortion. Thirteen American states (Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Iowa, Indiana, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, North Dakota, New Jersey, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Virginia) ban reproductive cloning and three states (Arizona, Maryland, Missouri) prohibit use of public funds for such activities.[15]

[edit] United Kingdom

On January 14, 2001 the British government passed The Human Fertilisation and Embryology (Research Purposes) Regulations 2001[16] to amend the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 by extending allowable reasons for embryo research to permit research around stem cells and cell nuclear replacement, thus allowing therapeutic cloning. However, on 15 November 2001, a pro-life group won a High Court legal challenge, which struck down the regulation and

effectively left all forms of cloning unregulated in the UK. Their hope was that Parliament would fill this gap by passing prohibitive legislation.[17][18] Parliament was quick to pass the Human Reproductive Cloning Act 2001 which explicitly prohibited reproductive cloning. The remaining gap with regard to therapeutic cloning was closed when the appeals courts reversed the previous decision of the High Court.[19] The first licence was granted on August 11, 2004 to researchers at the University of Newcastle to allow them to investigate treatments for diabetes, Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease.[20] The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008, a major review of fertility legislation, repealed the 2001 Cloning Act by making amendments of similar effect to the 1990 Act. The 2008 Act also allows experiments on hybrid human-animal embryos.[21]

[edit] Religious objections

The Roman Catholic Church, under the papacy of Benedict XVI, has condemned the practice of human cloning, in the magisterial instruction Dignitas Personae, stating that it represents a "grave offense to the dignity of that person as well as to the fundamental equality of all people."[22] Sunni Muslims consider human cloning to be forbidden by Islam.[23] The Islamic Fiqh Academy, in its Tenth Conference proceedings, which was convened in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in the period from June 28, 1997 to July 3, 1997, issued a Fatw stating that human cloning is haraam (prohibited by the faith).[24][25]

In popular culture
Cloning is a recurring theme in a wide variety of contemporary science fiction, ranging from action films such as the 2000 film The 6th Day to comedies such as Woody Allen's 1973 film Sleeper. The Radiohead album Kid A has been suggested to be the story of the first human clone.
[26]

Cloning has been used in fiction as a way of recreating historical figures. The 1973 novel Joshua Son of None revolves around the cloning of an assassinated American president strongly implied to be John F. Kennedy. In the 1976 Ira Levin novel The Boys from Brazil and its 1978 film adaptation, Josef Mengele uses cloning to create copies of Adolf Hitler. A Parade of Mirrors and Reflections, a novel by Anatoly Kudryavitsky, centers of the cloning of deceased Soviet premier Yuri Andropov. In the 2002-2003 animated series Clone High, the US military secretly runs a high school attended by clones of various historical leaders. Several works of fiction portray a future in which human cloning has become the normal process of reproduction for various reasons. Aldous Huxley's 1932 novel Brave New World envisions a futuristic world in which large numbers of clones are cultivated industrially and conditioned before birth for specific castes. The 2005 film on Flux depicts a future when the human species survives by means of cloning due to generalized infertility. In the comic book series Y: The Last

Man, the spontaneous death of every male on the planet necessitates the use of human cloning to prevent the extinction of humanity. The implications of using clones to replace deceased loved ones are explored in several works of fiction. In Margaret Peterson Haddix's novel Double Identity, the main character discovers that she is a clone of her deceased older sister. The 2010 film Womb involves a woman impregnating herself with a clone of her deceased fianc. A recurring sub-theme of cloning fiction is the use of clones as a supply of organs for transplantation. The 2005 Kazuo Ishiguro novel Never Let Me Go and the 2010 film adaption are set in an alternate history in which cloned humans are created for the sole purpose of providing organ donations to naturally born humans. The 2005 film The Island revolves around a similar plot, with the exception that the clones are unaware of the reason for their existence. The main character of Nancy Farmer's young adult science fiction novel The House of the Scorpion discovers that he is a clone of a prominent drug lord who plans to use his organs as a way of extending his life. The Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Similitude" deals with the moral and ethical issues surrounding growing a human clone to harvest tissue for an injured crewman. The Kryptonians of the Superman comic book series each possess three clones that provide them with body parts. The use of human clones for evil purposes is a theme explored in the Nintendo 64 first-person shooter game Perfect Dark. Having their request for the use of the Pelagic II turned down by the US President, the evil dataDyne Corporation secretly makes a clone of him and plans to kill the original, thus having access to the vehicle to perform a deep-sea search for the Cetan ship, which contains a vastly powerful weapon. The game's protagonist, Joanna Dark, controlled by the player, kills the clone and foils dataDyne's plans. The differences between the President and his clone are that the President is wearing his suit and follows Joanna, while his counterpart is wearing only a long-sleved t-Shirt and a tie (without the suit) and flees upon sighting Joanna. The heavily criticized Spider-Man 1990's storyline 'Clone Saga', Spider-Man was cloned several times, one of whom- Ben Reilly (who was once believed to be the original Peter Parker) took the mantle of the hero. The use of human cloning for military purposes has also been explored in several works. The Clone Wars portrayed in the Star Wars franchise depicts the use of clones to rapidly create a well-trained and expendable army. The Metal Gear Solid video game franchise involves the use of human cloning to create copies of a legendary soldier. In the Doctor Who episode The Doctor's Daughter, a tissue sample from The Doctor's arm is used to create a full-grown female soldier. The main antagonist of the film Star Trek Nemesis is a clone of Jean-Luc Picard, created by the Romulans as part of a plot to replace high-ranking Federation officials with Romulan agents.

The History of Cloninng

The first theories and experiments with cloning began in the late 1880s as scientists sought to prove their theories about how the genetic material inside cells worked. The earliest experiments

involved splitting the embryos of frogs and salamanders to see how the resulting animals would develop. As chromosomes became better understood, more experiments were done with cloning, resulting in the first cloned animals in 1952.

History
o

Discoveries about the nature of DNA in the 1940s made it possible for cloning experiments to progress. In 1944 it was discovered that genetic information for each cell was kept in the cell's DNA. When Oswald Avery found this genetic information, it gave scientists new ways to try to clone animals by using that genetic blueprint.

Types
o

The first cloned animals were northern leopard frogs that were cloned in 1952. Thomas J. King and Robert Briggs cloned 35 frog embryos and saw 27 tadpoles hatch. This first successful cloning taught scientists more about what cells needed to be used in the cloning process. King and Briggs believed, based on their clones, that young cells were more viable for the cloning process. Cells that were taken from adults resulted in abnormally developed tadpoles.

Significance
o

The next successful cloning experiments also resulted in cloned frogs. John Gurdon cloned South African frogs in 1962. His use of adult cells disproved the prior theory that only young cells could be used in the cloning process with success. From 1962 to 1965, Thomas King, Robert McKinnell and Marie Di Berardino created more frog clones from adult frog cells.

Considerations
o

While animal cloning had been the focus of cloning experiments, the 1960s also saw other types of cloning. In 1964 F.C. Steward took an adult root cell from a carrot plant and successfully cloned the plant. Throughout the rest of the 1960s, scientists continued to clone frogs and to discover more about DNA. The first gene was discovered in 1969.

Potential
o

In 1977, the first cloned mice were created. Mouse cloning research continued, and new cloned mice were created in 1979. The first mammal was cloned in 1984. The cloned sheep was quickly followed in 1985 with cloned cattle embryos. A cow clone was created in 1986 and several calves in 1993. That same year, human embryos were cloned for the first time. In 1995 and 1996, sheep were cloned, including the famous Dolly. Since Dolly's creation, the cloning of mice and

othersmall animals has continued, but human cloning research has been banned in many countries.

Human Cloning
Animal cloning has produced some remarkable results within the last few years, which has suggested to some that there should be a way to produce a human clone within the next year. Many news articles have appeared recently highlighting the potential to clone a human baby in order to replace a loved one who died as a newborn. Many social, moral, and ethical arguments have been raised in opposition to copying a person. For more details see AMA's 1999 CEJA Report: The Ethics of Cloning (PDF, 41KB). But perhaps more important is the concern that we do not fully understand the science behind the successes from animal cloning experiments. Animal cloning success (and failure) Dolly, the sheep, was the first successfully cloned mammal (I. Wilmut et al., Nature 1997;385:810). Since 1997, gradual improvements in cloning technology have enabled researchers to generate mouse, cattle, goat, pig, deer, rabbit, cat, mule, and horse clones. While there have been no substantiated evidence for the cloning of humans, recent successes by South Korean researchers in generating stem cells from cloned human embryos (WS Hwang et al., Science 2005) have heightened concerns that this scenario is not beyond the realm of possibility. In spite of recent technological advances, animal cloning remains extremely inefficient. For every 100 experiments only one, two, or if lucky, perhaps three appear to produce a viable offspring in surrogate mothers. While scientific explanations for these failures remain to be defined, many researchers feel they represent nothing more than technical hurdles that will one day be solved. Even then it's survival beyond the perinatal period is unlikely. These is no reason to believe that any different outcomes will occur if and when human cloning begins. Types of Human Cloning There are two types of human cloning. Reproductive cloning is what most people think of when referring to human cloning. This involves creating a human clone and allowing it to continue through the various stages of development. Theoretically, such a clone would be born and continue to develop and live as a separate individual, but with the exact genetic development of whomever donated a copy of their genetic code. Therapeutic cloning is currently the most socially accepted form of human cloning. This refers to the creation of human clones in the very same way as in reproductive cloning, but for the sole purpose of harvesting stem cells for research purposes. Obtaining these stem cells, however, always necessitates the destruction of the created human clone in the earliest stages of life. ( See sidebar on page 10 .) The three different types of "cloning" are:

Embryo cloning: This is a medical technique which produces monozygotic (identical) twins or triplets. It duplicates the process that nature uses to produce twins or triplets. One or more cells are removed from a fertilized embryo and encouraged to develop into one or more duplicate embryos. Twins or triplets are thus formed, with identical DNA. This has been done for many years on various species of animals; only very limited experimentation has been done on humans. Adult DNA cloning (a.k.a. reproductive cloning) This technique which is intended to produce a duplicate of an existing animal. It has been used to clone a sheep and other mammals. The DNA from an ovum is removed and replaced with the DNA from a cell removed from an adult animal. Then, the fertilized ovum, now called a preembryo, is implanted in a womb and allowed to develop into a new animal. As of 2002-JAN, It had not been tried on humans. It is specifically forbidden by law in many countries. There are rumors that Dr. Severino Aninori has successfully initiated a pregnancy through reproductive cloning. It has the potential of producing a twin of an existing person. Based on previous animal studies, it also has the potential of producing severe genetic defects. For the latter reason alone, many medical ethicists consider it to be a profoundly immoral procedure when done on humans. Therapeutic cloning (a.k.a. biomedical cloning): This is a procedure whose initial stages are identical to adult DNA cloning. However, the stem cells are removed from the pre-embryo with the intent of producing tissue or a whole organ for transplant back into the person who supplied the DNA. The pre-embryo dies in the process. The goal of therapeutic cloning is to produce a healthy copy of a sick person's tissue or organ for transplant. This technique would be vastly superior to relying on organ transplants from other people. The supply would be unlimited, so there would be no waiting lists. The tissue or organ would have the sick person's original DNA; the patient would not have to take immunosuppressant drugs for the rest of their life, as is now required after transplants. There would not be any danger of organ rejection.

Religious Perspectives

Two religion panelists, Suzanne Holland and Laurie Zoloth, are co editors of The Human Embryonic Stem Cell Debate: Science, Ethics and Public Policy (MIT Press, 2001). Holland, assistant professor of Religious and Social Ethics at the University of Puget Sound, began the panel with a discussion of Protestant ideas about the sin of pride and respect for persons and how these apply to human reproductive cloning. Given current safety concerns about cloning, she was in favor of a continuing ban. But ultimately, she argued, cloning should be regulated rather than banned outright. In fact, she suggested, the entire fertility industry requires more regulation. As a basis

for such regulation, she proposed assessing the motivation of those who want to use the technology. Those whose motives arise from benevolence--for example, those who want to raise a child but have no other means of bearing a genetically related baby--should be allowed to undergo a cloning procedure. Those whose motives arise more from narcissistic considerations -- people who want immortality or novelty -should be prohibited from using the technology. She proposed mandatory counseling and a waiting period as a means of assessing motivation.