Cloning has been going on in the natural world for thousands of years. A clone is simplyone living thing made from another, leading to two organisms with the same set of genes. In that sense, identical twins are clones, because they have identical DNA. Sometimes,plants are self-pollinated, producing seeds and eventually more plants with the samegenetic code. When earthworms are cut in half, they regenerate the missing parts of theirbodies, leading to two worms with the same set of genes. Any organism that reproducesasexually; produces a clone. However, the ability to intentionally create a clone in theanimal kingdom by working on the cellular level is a very recent development. From sheep to monkeys, scientist have made great strides in the past few years incloning mammals. The birth of these transgenered animals provides a major steppingstone for the cloning of humans. Now groups say they are ready to clone a human being. Controversy over their plan runs high, but scientists believe the technology for humancloning, at least a limited type of cloning for now, is available. A revolution inreproductive biology is now taking place, that provides technical means for cloninghumans. Many scientists who work with cloned animals say that the procedure isdifficult and dangerous and too ethical to try on humans. Therefore it is my purpose inthis paper to chronicle some events that have led to the still emerging technologies thatcan be directly applicable to the of potential human cloning.Dolly, born at the Roslin Institute in Scotland in 1996, was the first mammal to becloned from an adult mammal. When Ian Wilmut, Keith H. S. Campbell and theircolleagues announced in February that they had cloned an adult sheep to create a lambwith no father, they stunned a world unprepared to understand virgin births. They alsostartled a generation of researchers who had grown to believe, through many failedexperiments, that cells from adult animals ...
