Cloning for humans?
By: Lara Hartley
What are we thinking?
Even with practiced efforts, some 25 percent of cloned animals have overt problems, Lanza notes--minor slips during reprogramming, culturing or handling of the embryos can lead to developmental errors. Attempting to clone a human would be so risky, Lanza says, it "would be like sending a baby up into space in a rocket that has a 50-50 chance of blowing up."
In the U.S., not all states have banned human reproductive cloning. The United Nations has adopted a nonbinding ban. If human cloning happens, it will "occur in a less restrictive area of the world--probably by some wealthy eccentric individual," Lanza conjectures. Will we recoil in horror or grow to accept cloning as we have in vitro fertilization? Certainly developing new ways to create life will force us to think about the responsibilities of wielding such immense scientific power.