• Question: Will we ever be able to legally clone human beings?

    Asked by mizzlily to Dilwar, Lou, Rachel, Simon, Susan on 16 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Susan Skelton

      Susan Skelton answered on 16 Nov 2013:

      Good question, mizzlily!
      The ethics of human cloning is very controversial. I don’t know too much about this field, so I had to look it up.

      There are two main types of human cloning: therapeutic cloning and reproductive cloning. Therapeutic cloning involves cloning cells from an adult to use in medicine and transplants. Reproductive cloning would involve making cloned humans, for couples wanting to have a child, but cannot naturally.

      Therapeutic cloning is an active area of research. As far as I know, it is legal in the UK to clone human embryos and even human-animal hybrid embryos for therapeutic reasons. But the embryos must then be destroyed. In reproductive cloning the embryo would be placed into a woman’s womb and allowed to continue development and be born. At the moment it is illegal for a cloned human embryo to be transferred to a woman’s womb.

      We don’t know if this were to happen, whether the embryo would survive to be born and grow to adulthood.

      I don’t know if it will ever be legal to clone humans for reproductive reasons. We still have to decide whether this would be right or wrong. What do you think?

    • Photo: Simon Langley-Evans

      Simon Langley-Evans answered on 16 Nov 2013:

      Mizzlily, another great question from you. Susan has already given you a good answer about this so I will try and add to it. At the moment scientists can clone many different species and a lot of animals have been grown in this way, usually to enable scientists to produce new drugs and other things that will help humans. At the University of Nottingham where I work, one of my colleagues was Keith Campbell who was one of the scientists who cloned Dolly the sheep. Keith sadly died last year. He had strong views about the ethics of cloning and did not think that humans should ever be manipulated in this way, other than at the embryo stage as Susan has described.

      One of the big problems with cloned animals is that the techniques don’t work very well. When cloning a sheep for example, Keith would have to make maybe 100 clones, just to get one successful pregnant ewe and living lambs. The cloned animals often have malformations that make them sick when they grow up. These would be unacceptable risks to take with humans.

    • Photo: Rachel Dakin

      Rachel Dakin answered on 17 Nov 2013:

      Interesting question and already some good answers. Obviously the legally part will come down to those who make laws. I’m sure at some point in the future this will be debated by governments though I don’t think it’ll be allowed. Everyone has different opinions on whether it is ethically right. I don’t think it is. However, as Susan and Simon mentioned, there is use in cloning parts of humans to find new therapies and medicines. I can most definintely see the benefit of this, as long as the laws are in place to make it clear what is and isn’t allowed.

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