Cloning, as portrayed in sci-fi films and books seems very futuristic. Nature, however, has been doing it for millions of years. For example, identical twins have almost identical DNA, and asexual reproduction in some plants and organisms can produce genetically identical offspring. And scientists make genetic doubles in the lab, though the process is a little different.
Cloning is the process of taking genetic information from one living thing and creating identical copies of it. The copied material is called a clone. Geneticists have cloned cells, tissues, genes and entire animals.
Long before Dolly the sheep was cloned almost 23 years ago, science fiction writers have fantasized about armies of look-alikes wiping out the rest of humanity, or clones bred solely to sustain their identical ancestors. The idea of clones is unsettling because it violates the fundamental moral understanding that we are all different and equally valuable.
Scientists marked the highest achievement in cloning history early last year when they cloned two monkeys. Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua were the first primates ever to have been cloned. No scientist before had managed to make exact replicas of animals so close to us on the tree of life. That makes you think, can we clone humans?
Credits: Ben Curtis
Cloning a mammal defied the scientific dogma of its time. The success led to dire and fantastic predictions: Humans would be cloned. Diseases would be prevented. Lost children rebirthed.
Will humans be ever cloned?
Prominent scientists involved in cloning say they’ve never had any intention of replicating a person — and are as wary of the idea as everyone else.
Will humans ever be cloned? Most likely not! As of today, cloning a person remains unfeasible, with no scientific benefit and an unacceptable level of risk, several scientists say. Moreover, cloning a human is currently illegal in most parts of the world.
Ian Wilmut, the scientist who cloned the first animal Dolly the Sheep 23 years ago, is now an emeritus professor at The Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburgh where he did his initial work. Wilmut says he thinks it would be possible to clone a human—but highly unadvisable. The cloning technique used to create Dolly has been shown not to work in primates until it did on the monkeys in 2018. He believes it could be possible with continuously advancing techniques but said he is vehemently opposed to the idea of cloning a person.
“Just because it may now work in the sense of producing offspring doesn’t mean to say we should do it,” he says. “The likelihood is you would get pregnancy losses, abnormal births.”
On the other hand, cloning stem cells from humans is a very promising field of research. Stem cells can be reprogrammed to become any type of cell needed to repair or replace damaged tissue or cells in the body. Stem cell research has the potential to help people who have spinal injuries and other conditions.
Credits: The Roslin Institute
Sources: Discover Magazine, Scientific American, Live Science
