The ideas which follow have been proven successful in medical laboratories across the country. Scientists have the technology. What they don’t have is permission from government or sanctions from the public to experiment with cloning human beings. It is my belief that the scientific community will not abandon the research simply because of a governmental ban. Rather they are more likely to continue it away from public scrutiny with the idea that views of society will change with time. To date, the research which makes human cloning possible has yielded the following successes: (3)
first successful freezing of bull semen - 1950
frogs cloned from asexual tadpole cells- 1952
frogs cloned using cells of older tadpoles- 1962
“Baby Louise” was conceived in a laboratory dish through in vitro fertilization -1978
“Baby M” was born to a surrogate mother through artificial issemination-1983
Dolly, the sheep was reproduced in the exact genetic image of its mother- 1996/ 1997
Cloning of a Rhesus monkey whose reproductive development is close to a human’s-1997.
Cloning of two more sheep, Molly and Polly with human blood clotting proteins in their milk which will be extracted to treat human hemophilia -1997
Cloning has been successful in these areas. What makes the difference in trying it with human beings? There is a fear that ”embryos will be manipulated to produce a child with the desired eye or hair color or with enhanced physical prowess or intelligence. Another fear is that a human will be cloned to provide organs for transplants for its genetic twin.” (4) We cannot know if these things will happen.