- Supporters of cloning say it will become
acceptable and commonplace.
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- In 1997, British scientists successfully
clone a sheep named Dolly.
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- In 1998, an American billionaire pays
a cloning expert $5 Million to recreate his favourite pet collie mongrel.
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- What is the betting 1999 will see someone
come up with the first cloned human embryo?
-
-
- Scientists are believed to be close to
making the breakthrough. Last year scientists at the University of Hawaii
successfully cloned 50 mice, whose genetic make-up is quite close to that
of humans.
-
- As American laboratories race to become
the first to produce a cloned human embryo the US Congress has been grappling
with the legislation.
-
-
- President Bill Clinton backed a bill
which would have outlawed human cloning but the legislation was drawn so
loosely it would have outlawed all genetic research. Opponents tore it
apart and it never saw the light of day.
-
- Scientists are speeding matters up now
in the hope they can break the taboo on cloning before it is made illegal.
-
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- Lee Silver, a genetics professor at Princeton
University near New York, says: "There are definitely going to be
human clones, which is what most people are worried about.
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- "But after they are born we are
not going to call them clones, they are going to be normal children."
-
-
- Supporters of cloning, such as US litigation
expert Mark Eibert, say it would help infertile couples but critics say
it is unnecessary and open to abuse.
-
- But the scientists are not waiting for
the outcome of the moral and legal arguments.
-
- Genetics expert Steen Willadsen says
there are no shortage of labs queuing up to be the first to clone a human:
"It is a relatively simple procedure. There must be hundreds of people
who would be able to do it now.
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- "It would only take a couple of
years plus the obligatory nine months."
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