Should Human Cloning be Legal? Cloning captured the publics attention when Scottish scientists startled the world in July of 1996 when they announced the birth of a sheep named Dolly which they had cloned from the nucleus of an adult mammary cell and a sheep egg. Ever since this spectacular event occurred people have been thinking about the possibility of cloning humans. What would a clone be like? His/her physical appearance would be the same as the person he/she was cloned from, but depending on the society it would be brought up in its personality would be totally different. Many people in this decade believe that human cloning should be illegal for many different reasons, but there are many people who think it should be legal. Human cloning is a very sensitive subject with its advantages and disadvantages.Strictly speaking embryo cloning is a technique used by researchers and animal breeders to split a single embryo into two or more embryos that will have the exact same genetic information (Wall 1117). The procedures used in cloning human embryos are very similar to the cloning of animal embryos, except for the zona pellucida. The zona pellucida is a protective protein and polysaccharide membrane that covers the internal contents of the embryo, and provides the necessary nutrients for the first several cell divisions that occur within the embryo. Several sperm cells and mature egg cells are gathered from donors at fertility clinics, and are combined in a petri dish using in vitro fertilization procedures to form an embryo. In an alternate process, already produced embryos are gathered from fertility clinics. The acquired embryo is placed in a petri dish and is allowed to develop into a mass of two to eight cells. Next a chemical solution is added to the zona pellucida that covers the embryo. After the zona pellucida is dissolved, the cells within the embryo are freed. These two to eight cells are collected by research...
