Is the human cloning actually possible?

Is the human cloning actually possible?

Is the human cloning actually possible?


Human cloning is a controversial idea. Purely for the fact that the process is seen as unethical. Many of these views have religious origins and come down to the fundamental idea that the practice of human cloning is the practice of playing God. These views have prevented the practice of cloning a human. In the Year 2015, around 70 countries had banned human cloning. So how do we know if human cloning is possible if it’s next to impossible to test? That’s exactly what we are going to talk about right now. Human cloning is the creation of a genetically identical copy of a human or an artificial human. The process involves reproducing human cells and tissue. Researchers successfully cloned a frog in the 1950s but the process of human cloning has been a heated topic of debate since the 1960s.

Joshua Lederberg an advocate for human cloning and genetic engineering published an article in the American Naturalist in 1966. He also published it again in the Washington Post in 1967. This article caused a heated debate between Lederberg, a Nobel Prize-winning geneticist and Leon Kass, a conservative bioethicist. Leon Kass at the time believed that program reproduction of men will in fact to humanize him. A sheep named Dolly was successfully cloned in 1996 by somatic cell nuclear transfer making it the first mammal to be successfully cloned. After this happened, it was only natural for the idea of human cloning to be discussed. Several nations made the process of human cloning illegal when at the same time scientists were promising to successfully create a human clone in the next few years.

Is the human cloning actually possible?

Cloning problems.

Since the 1950s, researchers have been able to clone mice, cats, goats, rabbits, sheep, pigs and cows. However, with each of these cases, there were problems. Cloning a mouse and cloning a human are two very different things. But the first step in that direction would be to clone a primate. Researchers had infinite examples from Mice to work with. But the process of attaining a primate egg to the purpose of cloning is difficult. Such samples are hard to come by. The efforts to clone primates have failed.

Cloning a mouse involves taking the nucleus of an egg and inserting it into another. When this is being done, proteins that are necessary to help cells divide are also removed. For mice, this is not a problem because the embryo is able to make those proteins again. But primates are not able to do this. This could be attributed to why efforts to clone a primate have failed. In addition to that problem, cloning animals also resulted in those animals having genetic abnormalities. This is because the clone only has one parent instead of two.

These abnormalities would result in embryos not getting implanted inside a uterus and occasionally the fetus would abort without warning or the animal would die shortly after being born. Because of the extremely high rate of death and the developmental abnormalities, the process of human cloning is seen as unethical. Despite all of this, the benefits of human cloning if successful would be substantial.

Is the human cloning actually possible?

Stem cell therapy.

Stem cell therapy, for example, is the use of stem cells to treat or prevent a disease or condition. Regenerative medicine could be used to create organs for transplantation. Those artificial organs would reduce the risk of organ transplant rejection by the recipient’s body because they were created using their own genetic materials rather than the genetic material of a donor. The regenerative medicine is not currently in clinical use. It’s heavily researched for its potential. As it stands right now, only one type of stem cell therapy, bone marrow transplantation, is in clinical use. As it stands right now, no record of a human clone exists. Even though it may be possible, it’s unlikely that it will ever happen because of the ethical implications.


The death rate of cloning is so high.

Only one in every 100 attempts result in a living animal. When those animals do successfully survive, they experience poor health. On an international level, human cloning is not allowed. The United Nations General Assembly banned all forms of human cloning in 2005.

As it stands right now, only ten states in America allow human embryos to be created but ban the embryo from maturing fully. A Chinese company named Boyalife Group, claims to have the technology to clone human and it’s currently building a massive animal cloning facility. But they have restrained from the practice of cloning humans because they fear the public backlash. As it stands, there is no reason beneficial enough to change the public outlook toward human cloning. Boyalife plans to use the facility for the purpose of cloning animal commercially for livestock or pets. So, is human cloning possible? Theoretically yes, it is, but to this day no records of a fully developed human clone exist. Even though it may be possible, it is unlikely that it will ever happen because of the ethical implications.

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