Reducibly Complex

On this day in 1997, the successful cloning of an adult mammal was announced: a female lamb named “Dolly” that was born July 5th, 1996. The accomplishment of a group of scientists supervised by Ian Wilmut at Roslin Institute, Edinburgh, Scotland, was primarily the work of biologist Keith Campbell. Dolly was the first mammal ever successfully cloned from a cell of an adult animal. Using microscopic needles, scientists had replaced the nucleus of an egg cell with the nucleus from a parent udder cell. The resulting embryo was implanted into the womb of a third, surrogate sheep. Dolly’s DNA was matched to show she was a clone. Dolly lived until February 14th, 2003, when she was put down due to the effects of a progressive lung disease.

I genuinely wonder when (NOT if) we humans will ever clone other humans. I’m not sure where I stand on the ethical issue with cloning of humans. I don’t have a fundamental problem with cloning humans (and I certainly don’t have a religious objection), but the practicality of it bothers me; is it really necessary to clone entire humans?

As for cloning organs, I have no problem with that at all. I think that, should research provide a viable process, the production of human organs by means of cloning has the potential to help in a lot of medical ways, providing “donor” organs for people in need of transplants.

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