The Ethics of Cloning

The following information primarily comes from a"cloning fact sheet" on the National Human Genome Research Institute website.

Cloning is generally defined the generation of an organism with the exact same genome as another organism. This can occur naturally in asexually replicating bacteria, some species of lizards, or in the case of twins. In 1979 The first animal clone was artificially created by splitting an early-stage mouse embryo. This differs from the advent of Dolly the sheep in 1996, which was created instead by inserting the genome of an adult sheep's udder cells into an embryonic cells and then gestated in a host mother. Since then, cloning of livestock for meat and dairy products was approved by the FDA in 2008. However as cloning is an expensive process on such products are yet commercially available.

In the case of humans, cloning has not yet been achieved. This is in part due to current technical difficulties in cloning primates, but also due to ethical dilemmas that would arise from cloning individuals of our own species. While the 2005 United Nations Declaration on Human Cloning forbids the practice (with violations resulting in up to 10 years in jail in addition to fines), it remains a point of contentious debate as to whether individuals should be allowed reproduce clones of themselves or others, with some groups strongly advocating for its legalization.

 Indeed, the benefits of exploring this technology must be carefully weighed against its potential for abuse (see below).