Cloning, Ethics of

The term cloning is used to describe many different processes that involve making duplicates of biological material. Cloning can occur at the level of DNA, a single cell, tissues, or the whole organism. In 1997, Dolly, the cloned sheep, caught the world’s imagination and caused a media sensation because she was the result of a novel cloning technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). The distinctiveness of Dolly was not that she was a clone but that she was created from an adult sheep’s somatic cell. Ethical controversies of cloning surround the technique whose aim is to create a genetic duplicate of the entire organism.

[Page 298]There are two kinds of SCNT cloning: research cloning—also referred to as therapeutic cloning—and reproductive cloning. The difference between research ...