In February 1997, when Dr. Ian Wilmut and his team of scientists in Scotland astonished the world by announcing that they had successfully cloned a sheep, it sparked an international debate. Since the invention of Dolly, scientists have been faced with the imminent technology to clone human beings. This has raised questions about what it means to be human and what restrictions should be placed on scientific research. Scientists should use methods of cloning of individual human cells because it provides benefits of curing diseases and regrowth of damaged organs or tissues. However, scientists should not clone whole adult human beings because of the violation of moral, ethical, and religious concerns. Hence, scientists must separate making spare body parts from making whole people. Cloning is defined as: The production of duplicate copies of genetic material, cells, or entire multicellular living organisms. The copies are referred to as clones. Cloning occurs naturally and is also engineered by human beings. The possibility that people might be cloned from the cells of a single adult human had long been a subject primarily of fantasy and science fiction but became very definite at the end of the 20th century. This possibility stemmed from the successful cloning of lower mammals, leaving little doubt in many scientists' minds that humans could and would one day be cloned. In nature, and even in the lives of humans, clones are present. A clone is an organism that has the same genetic information as another organism. Cloning occurs with all plants, some insects, algae, and even humans. Identical twins are clones of each other. They have the same exact genetic information due to the division of an embryo in early development, which produces two identical embryos. Thus, natural cloning already exists. Cloning is currently a technology that many people could use. The benefits that cloning could offer range from improving conventional an...
