Creating exact copies (clones) of an individual has long been a made-to-believe story in various cultures throughout mankind history. However, the report of successfully creating a genetic clone of an adult animal from a differentiated somatic cell [1] completely shocked the world. The cloning technology involves taking the nucleus from a somatic cell and then inserting that nucleus into an unf...

Within 2 years of the announced birth in 1997 of Dolly, the lamb cloned from the mam-mary cells of an adult ewe, research groups announced that they had cloned mice and calves by using differentiated somatic cells (1– 3). In the cloning technique used to produce Dolly, the nucleus of a somatic cell of the ewe was transferred to a sheep oocyte from which the nucleus had been removed, and the cel...

Recent scientific innovations, and proposed legislation, have raised questions about the nature of the constitutional right to reproductive freedom, and in particular about whether there is a constitutional “right to clone.” This essay urges that as a matter of substantive due process, rationality review is probably appropriate, and that restrictions on both reproductive and therapeutic cloning...

On 30 November 2000, the Japanese Parliament enacted the Human Cloning Regulation Act.1 In its core, the Act prohibits transfer of human embryos and human-animal cloned embryos made by somatic nuclear transfer, as well as human-animal chimeric embryos, to a human or animal uterus. These provisions are more than mere lip service, as a breach of this prohibition of human cloning can be punished b...

The current debate on the ethics of cloning humans is both uninspired and uninspiring. In large measure this is because of mistakes that permeate the discourse, including the mistake of thinking that cloning technology is strictly a reproductive technology when it is used to create whole beings. As a result, the challenge this technology represents regarding our understanding of ourselves and t...

Mammalian embryo biotechnology with multiple applications in reproductive and therapeutic medicine has been summarized in this review article. Risk factors at the molecular, genetic and chromosomal level that profoundly influence the outcome of reproductive cloning have been included for serious considerations. Interspecies embryo cloning has turned out to be a unique bioassay to reveal the emb...