arguments given on both sides of the issue that follow, both of these moral philosophies are apparent.In understanding why some chose to reject or accept the practice of cloning, basic knowledge how cloning is achieved becomes helpful. Some reject cloning because they believe humans are "playing God", others claim that scientists do not "create life" by cloning any more than they would in the practice of in vitro fertilization. According to the American Heritage College Dictionary, cloning is "to reproduce or propagate asexually". This is obviously not the traditional form of human reproduction. There are three basic methods of cloning: separating the embryo and making twins with the same genetic make-up, taking a cell from a fertilized ovum when the cell begins to split and replace it in another female's ovum, or nuclear transplantation (Travis). The famous cloning of an adult ewe, who's offspring was named Dolly, was accomplished through the second method by Dr. Ian Wilmut and his colleagues at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland (World Book). Dolly was "born" by taking genetic material from cells in the mammary glands of a 6 year-old ewe and putting the acquired cells into an unfertilized ovum. Out of 277 tries, researchers eventually produced only 29 embryos that survived longer than 6 days, of these 29, all died before birth except Dolly (Travis). In the 10 March 1998 issue of Time, J. Madeleine Nash explains how a clone of an adult ewe is "born" from nuclear transplantation. First, a cell is taken from the udder of an adult ewe and placed in a culture with very low concentrations of nutrients. As the cells starve, they stop dividing and switch off their active genes, and go into hibernation. An unfertilized egg is then taken from another adult ewe and the egg's nucleus, along with its DNA, is sucked out, leaving an empty egg cell that still has the cellular machinery to produce an embryo. The empty egg and the cultur...
