On February 22, 1997, newspapers across the country splashed the face of a sheep on their front pages along with sensational headlines that heralded in a new era of cloning.
February 22, 1997
In a feat that may be the one bit of genetic engineering that has been anticipated and dreaded more than any other, researchers in Britain are reporting that they have cloned an adult mammal for the first time.
In theory, researchers said, such techniques could be used to take a cell from an adult human and use the DNA to create a genetically identical human -- a time-delayed twin. That prospect raises the thorniest of ethical and philosophical questions.
Dr. Lee Silver, a biology professor at Princeton University, said last week that the announcement had come just in time for him to revise his forthcoming book so the first chapter will no longer state that such cloning is impossible.
''It's unbelievable,'' Dr. Silver said. ''It basically means that there are no limits. It means all of science fiction is true. They said it could never be done and now here it is, done before the year 2000.''
People might be cloned without their knowledge or consent. After all, all that would be needed would be some cells. If there is a market for a sperm bank selling semen from Nobel laureates, how much better would it be to bear a child that would actually be a clone of a great thinker or, perhaps, a great beauty or great athlete?
''The genie is out of the bottle,'' said Dr. Ronald Munson, a medical ethicist at the University of Missouri in St. Louis. ''This technology is not, in principle, policeable.''
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The purpose of this website is to inform the viewer about the history and process of cloning, provide examples of cloning in books and movies and to give a glimpse of the current debate revolving around the ethics of cloning.
Website created by: Karishma Kollipara
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Updated: November 31, 2008