Cloning Is Here: Can We Really Live with Ourselves?

• Pages: 2-3
• Date: 01 January 2024
• Author: John M. McNichols
• Subject Matter: Civil Law

By John M. McNichols, Litigation News As sociate Editor

Cloning Is Here: Can We Really Live

with Ourselves?

another—at least not in a veriable way—scientists have advo-

cated using similar techniques to create human stem cells for

research and therapeutic purposes.

In the United States, the legal reaction to this has been

surprisingly muted, at least at the federal level. Although

Congress sought to pass legislation restricting cloning in 2001,

the measure did not become law, and thus, today the only legal

restrictions on cloning are state laws and federal administra-

tive regulations.

What Is Cloning?

Cloningis the process of creating a new living organism from

part of another one, with the result that the new and the old

are genetically identical. Although cloning as a concept fre-

quently conjures up images of scientists in lab coats, the prac-

tice has been around since time immemorial in forms much

closer to nature than the modern laboratory. The term “clone”

comes from the ancient Greek word for “twig,” a reference to

the common botanical practice of burying part of a plant in

order to grow a new one of the same kind.

The articial cloning of animals through modern biotech-

nology is, of course, more complicated, as scientists require

more than fertile soil to bring a new animal into being. The

most common technique for this purpose is known as “nuclear

transfer,” which involves taking a sample cell from an adult

© Getty Image s

eptember 2023 marked the passing of British scientist

Ian Wilmut, who made headlines two decades earlier

when he and his team at Scotland’s Roslin Institute

witnessed the live birth of a female lamb—later

named “Dolly”—that was genetically identical to an

already-existing adult female sheep. Wilmut and his team had

transferred the DNA of the adult sheep to Dolly in embryo,

thereby accomplishing the process known as “cloning.”

Long the stuff of science ction—it was the centerpiece of

the 1978 lm The Boys from Brazil, as well as 1993’s Jurassic

Par k—cloning was not unknown to scientists when Dolly was

born in 1996. But her birth was nevertheless notable as the

rst successful articial creation of an infant mammal from

the cell of a live adult. Given the high degree of similarity

among mammals and the potential application of the same

technology to human beings, Wilmut’s accomplishment kicked

off a restorm of discussion about the ethics of cloning and

whether it resembled “playing God.”

Since Dolly, scientists have successfully cloned far more

mammalian species, notably including at least one primate.

While cloning is today still primarily a research and develop-

ment activity, it has begun to enter the commercial sphere,

with companies offering animal cloning services for pets,

livestock, racehorses, and the like. And while no one has yet

created a living human being from the genetic material of

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