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How afraid of human cloning should we be? | Philip Ball

The creation of two monkeys brings the science of human cloning closer to reality. But that doesn’t mean it will happen

The cloning of macaque monkeys in China makes human reproductive cloning more conceivable. At the same time, it confirms how difficult it would be to clone a random adult – Adolf Hitler, say – from a piece of their tissue. And it changes nothing in the debate about whether such human cloning should ever happen.

Since the cloning of Dolly the sheep by scientists in Scotland in 1996, several other mammals have been cloned, including dogs, cats and pigs. But the same methods didn’t work so well for primates – like monkeys, and us. That’s why this latest step is significant. It shows that, with a bit of modification, the technique used for Dolly can create cloned, apparently healthy baby monkeys. The pair made this way by scientists at the Institute of Neuroscience in Shanghai have been christened Hua Hua and Zhong Zhong.

No one can yet know if cloning of a human fetus would work this way, but it seems entirely possible

Related: Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua: first primates born using Dolly the sheep cloning method

Continue reading... January 25, 2018 at 08:03PM

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