Traditionally, cloning is a term that inspires visions of movie
theaters and buttered popcorn but bioengineering has made leaps and
bounds that take the possibility of cloning from film reel to very
scary reality.
“Cloning” means to make an exact living copy of a cell or an organism
so that every aspect is identical. Picture the “identical” in identical
twins. Splitting of the ovum is, in a sense, nature’s “original” clone.
Artificial cloning can be done in several ways, but the first case that
I can recall hearing about was Dolly the Sheep. Dolly began her life in
July of 1997 and died young in February of 2003 at Britain’s Roslin
Institute, a lifespan of just under 6 years. She was created by a
process called somatic cell nuclear transfer. This means that a body
cell other than a sperm or egg cell, (in Dolly’s case a mammary cell),
is divided, with the nucleus being retained, and the rest of the cell
thrown away. The reversed process is repeated on a cell from an ovum,
with the nucleus discarded and the rest of the cell kept. The body cell
nucleus can then be inserted into the space left by the removal of the
egg cell’s nucleus and a chain reaction that ends in a blastocyst, (the
start of an embryo), begins. The growing embryo is identical in every
genetic way to the organism from which the original body cell was
removed.
The obvious question Dolly brings to mind is, “Can this be done to
humans?” The answer to that is where the scary science reality begins,
because it is, “Yes.” In fact, somatic cell nuclear
transfer is currently thought to be the most successful method for
cloning humans.
The first claims of successful human cloning came as early as 1978 from
an author named David Rorvik, who wrote he had witnessed the occurrence
and had personal knowledge of the clone. However, in the ensuing
court case, he was unable to corroborate his tale and he is generally
discounted as a trickster.
In more recent times, claims of success in human cloning have
originated from across the globe, including Korea’s 2004 fraud case. In
that case, Dr. Hwang Woo-Suk, of Seoul National University, was proven
to have fraudulently claimed success in the cloning of a human. He was
shown, however, to have been successful in the creation of an embryo by
parthenogenesis, (a less common, less successful method of tricking the
egg into believing it has been fertilized). This has advanced stem cell
research and incited further debate on the ethics and legalities of
this controversial subject, primarily on the use of human cloning to
further this science.
What that debate boils down to is this. Does the creation of human
embryos, merely for the purpose of harvesting “spare parts”, constitute
jeopardy for mankind as a whole? What about the subsequent destruction
of those embryos when the necessary pieces have been removed?
Unfortunately, there are no easy or even permanent answers to these
questions. Humans will do anything for survival. It has been documented
in cases both of horror and humanity throughout time.
In conclusion, the reality is that cloning is not only possible but
happening. If a human has not been successfully cloned yet, it seems to
be inevitable, as technology continues to grow. So, with populations
booming naturally already, it seems vital that today we look for
answers on unity and integration that can lead to peaceful co-existence
for each human living as neighbors on this planet.