A doctor, Dr Panayiotis Zavos, has claimed in a TV interview to have cloned nine embryos, in a secret lab somewhere in the Middle East.
It’s probably just an unfounded publicity stunt:
Professor Robert Winston, emeritus professor of fertility studies at Imperial College London, was blunter. “I do not know of any credible evidence that suggests Dr Zavos can clone a human being. This seems to be yet another one of his claims to get repeated publicity”
So what’s the big deal? Why not clone humans? There’s no deep ethical reason to be against it. After all, twins are clones of each other. A clone is simply an exact DNA copy of another person.
There is a good reason to be against human cloning though. The problem is a practical one:
it’s an experimental science (you might say an ‘embryonic science’), and as such, there are a lot of mistakes and misadventures.
The idea of producing deformed or stillborn babies, or children with bizarre mutations in the name of science, is abhorrent. Thankfully, there’s agreement across the political spectrum on this.
So cloning in theory is a nice idea. Cloning in practice is reckless and dangerous to the mother and the child, and is morally bankrupt.
Maybe in the far distant future, it will be completely safe and error free. If that happy day comes, hey Dr Zavos, go for it. Clone away.
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Crikey