鈥淓XTRAORDINARY鈥�, 鈥渟tupendous鈥�, 鈥渕ind-boggling鈥� and 鈥渇rightening鈥� were the words on everyone鈥檚 lips. They said it couldn鈥檛 happen before 2050, but now that an adult sheep has been cloned, there seems to be no technical reason why we could not do the same with people.
Although Dolly was created in Britain, where human cloning is banned, researchers elsewhere face no such restrictions. In the US, for example, research into reproduction is all in the unregulated private sector, though President Bill Clinton has now ordered a review of the implications of the breakthrough. This may lead to curbs on private experimentation as well.
鈥淚n many ways cloning could offer enormous benefits,鈥� says Simon Fishel, embryologist and scientific director of the Nurture fertility clinic in Nottingham. 鈥淵ou could clone from an adult or a child that is sick to produce embryonic stem cells that could be used to repair that individual鈥檚 damaged tissues.鈥� Potentially, scientists could even create brain-dead copies of humans as sources of perfectly-matched organ transplants, Fishel muses.
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But the prospect of 鈥渃arbon-copy humans鈥� was a prime concern in submissions to Britain鈥檚 Warnock Committee, which reported in 1984 on the ethics of test-tube babies and embryo research. 鈥淧eople felt a kind of horror about producing clones,鈥� says Mary Warnock. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 share this feeling-one doesn鈥檛 object to identical twins, after all. But I would need to be convinced that there is a reason for doing it in humans.鈥�
Other ethical commentators are more forthright in their objections. 鈥淚n my view, the current prohibition [on human cloning] should remain in force,鈥� says Margaret Brazier, professor of law at Manchester University. If brain-dead clones were nurtured and used as organ banks, she says, 鈥渢his would radically change the nature of what it is to be human鈥�.
鈥淎nd if a clone was allowed to develop as a normal child,鈥� Brazier adds, 鈥渨ho would be responsible for her welfare, who would be her parents, how would she cope psychologically and socially?鈥�
Richard Nicholson, editor of the Bulletin of Medical Ethics, comments: 鈥淭his sort of experiment seems to be based on the notion that knowledge is more important than anything else. Is it the right way forward to allow such research, given the possibilities for misuse?鈥�
Chris Polge, a pioneer in animal biotechnology who recently retired from the University of Cambridge, argues that cloning will never become widespread, even in agriculture. 鈥淎nimal breeding is making progress all the time because of genetic variation. Cloning fixes [the genome] in its present state,鈥� he says.
