When
Dolly the sheep was cloned, the immediate reaction was that humans would
now be able to make brand-new copies of themselves. People -- whether infertile
couples or rich megalomaniacs -- would trundle down to the lab, donate a
few skin cells, and have their genes squirted into an egg cell.
After a few weeks manipulation, the developing embryo would be implanted into a woman, much like embryos made by in-vitro fertilization (IVF).
At the end of gestation, out would pop an uncanny replica of the DNA donor.
The idea raised serious qualms -- not to mention moral revulsion.
How would a parent react to a genetic twin that happened to be an infant?
What would be the legal status of a child with no clear mother?
Who, if anybody, would be the father?
Didn't cloning amount to playing God?
These psycho-legal hassles soon were swept away
by the reality that cloning is a primitive procedure. In animal cloning,
hundreds of embryos are typically needed for each live birth. And the
offspring have enough birth defects to scare even those who favor therapeutic
cloning from favoring reproductive cloning. 
Reproductive cloning "is simply too risky," says Dan Wikler, professor of medical ethics at University of Wisconsin-Madison. "The experience of people who cloned animals was very uneven. To raise a child with these kinds of questions would be unethical at best, probably much worse."
Ronald Green, professor of medical ethics and head of the Ethics Institute at Dartmouth College, is an ethical advisor to Advanced Cell Technology, the Massachusetts company that cloned a human embryo last November. Green agrees that the risks are too great at this point. "This is a case of public health. The health of that child is not guaranteed." Green thinks reproductive cloning may deserve another consideration if, in the future, it becomes safer and more reliable.
Can't stomach carbon-copy people? How about using cloning to treat disease?
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