On February 23rd of 1997, an announcement was made that would shake the world and, inevitably, change it forever. Ian Wilmut, an embryologist with a genetic research facility named the Roslin Institute in Scotland, claimed that he and a group of scientists had successfully cloned a sheep. The sheep, named Dolly, was revolutionary in the Bioengineering world because it was the first mammal to be cloned directly from the genetic material of another sheep and was, in essence, an exact replica of its mother. Soon after, groups sprung up from all over the world claiming that, they too, had created clones. A group in Oregon declared that they had cloned monkeys while a Japanese research team professed to have created perfect clones of mice. What followed was a worldwide outcry for the world governments to regulate cloning before it bulged out of control. President Clinton rushed to stop government funding of human cloning research and urged independently financed researchers to stop cloning research until his National Bioethics Advisory Commission, which was founded the previous year, issued their report on the ethical implications(Bailey 1) of human cloning. The Committee issued the following statement in May of that year:The [National Bioethics Advisory] Commission concludes that at this time it is morally unacceptable for anyone in the public or private sector, whether in a research or clinical setting, to attempt to create a child using somatic cell nuclear transfer cloning. The Commission reached a consensus on this point because current scientific information indicates that this technique is not safe to use in humans at this point. Indeed, the Commission believes it would violate important ethical obligations were clinicians or researchers to attempt to create a child using these particular technologies, which are likely to involve unacceptable risks to the fetus and/or potential child. Moreover, in addition to safety concerns,...
