Catching Up with Clones

A recent article at NPR.org, Human Cloning May Be Just Around the Corner, brings one up to speed on what is taking place in research related to cloning including its goals and obstacles. The report says in part,

Here's why: If a skin cell is used to make a cloned embryo, any stem cells from that embryo would be genetically identical to the person who provided the skin cell. And thus, that person's immune system wouldn't reject tissue grown from those stem cells.

This promise of tailor-made stem-cell therapies has prompted several teams of scientists around the world to try to make embryonic stem cells from cloned embryos. But Robert Lanza of the biotech firm ACT says no one's managed it — yet.

There have now been at least a dozen … species cloned, but for each species there's been a unique set of problems, and the human is no different," Lanza says.

The article also says,

No reputable scientist is attempting to clone a live human being. That said, several teams around the world are trying to make cloned human embryos with the intention of deriving embryonic stem cells. No one has succeeded yet.

And it notes,

There's still no question that most people consider attempting to clone a human being unethical—at the very least because the cloning process seems to create animals with health problems.

For people opposed to destroying human embryos for any reason, cloned embryos present an ethical dilemma: Since a cloned embryo is a potential human life, it's wrong to destroy it.

Two articles in the archives are:
The Moral Morass
of Human Cloning

and two years later

The Ethics of Cloning

peace,
Frank+
The Rev. Frank Logue, Pastor