Push and pull on the new ‘C’ word

apparently healthy human clone, however, would deflate the criticism of cloning scientists including Ian Wilmut and Rudolf Jaenisch, who extrapolate from the animal experiments that the risk for the cloned baby would be unacceptably high. On the contrary, if failed attempts at reproductive cloning became public, there could possibly be an enormous political backlash which might also affect animal cloning, therapeutic cloning and stem cell research. Therefore, researchers active in these fields have reacted angrily against any claims that human reproductive cloning might already be possible. Apart from the risk arising from the lack of scientific understanding of the processes involved, there are ethical concerns mainly hinging on two key points: interfering with human reproduction in an unnatural way, and production of ‘identical copies’ of human beings. Discussions of the first point sound like an echo of the debate about in vitro fertilisation (IVF) 25 years ago. Patients claim the right to children with their own genes, while some religious fundamentalists want the reproduction process to remain taboo. The experience with IVF suggests that, as time and technology move on, new methods become widely accepted as long as they are safe and useful. Today, thousands of IVF babies are born every year, and nobody makes a fuss about it. The ‘identity’ aspect of reproductive cloning is often misrepresented in the media. The fact is that nobody will ever be able to create an identical copy of an existing human being, as nobody will be able to recreate the conditions that the clonee in question experienced in the womb. It is well-known that hormone exposure during the gestation period can influence a range of characteristic properties, including even sexual orientation. Thus, any clone baby will resemble their one and only parent more closely than ordinary children, but not as closely as identical twins. Current Biology Vol 13 No 3 R76