Cloning is a subject that we have have talked about a few times. It was science fiction just a few years ago, but now it has almost become science fact. Ethical people worry that even though everyone says that they are against human cloning, that someone in the world will do it. They have a good reason to worry, knowing the state of the world, you would have almost a sure bet if you bet that a human will be cloned. As a matter of fact, it might have happened already. How would we know if a small lab some where decided to clone a human and did it? If they weren't seeking publicity, they could easily keep it secret. Cloning is far from being perfected at the moment and usually requires many failures before success is achieved.

There are many problems with cloning. Telomeres are the ends of linear chromosomes. These telomeres are maintained by telomerase enzymes that add repeats to the ends of a chromosome. This is all very complicated, I know, but the reason I went into this area was to illustrate one of the problems with cloning. Cells that are created during cloning have shortened telomeres What does this mean to the clone? It means that the clone will age more rapidly, which brings up a question in ethics. Is it ethical to create a human only to watch him age and die in a fraction of a human life span? I think that we all know the answer to this question. But what if some one didn't care about this and was determined to create an army of clones? After all, he would only need them for a few years and he could always make more in the meantime. Could this happen? Not with the technology that exists right now, but technology is always advancing and it seems that this might be a possibility in the future.

An Italian fertility doctor has been claiming that he is on the threshold of creating a cloned baby. In November he announced that he had succeeded. The doctor is an expert in the field and one of his credits is inserting a donor egg into a 62 year old woman. If anyone could do it, he could. Having said that, no one believes he did it. Why is it that the experts feel this way? They know that hundreds of embryos had to be implanted in an animal before one took. Unless he has discovered another technique that he has kept secret, it is highly unlikely that he would have been able to do this. The doctor says that it only took him three tries. I am afraid that no one believes this.

Koreans working with an American scientist claim that they have cloned a human embryo. They go so far as to state that the technique that was used to accomplish this was the same as the one used to create Dolly the sheep. The cell that they stated that they used was a cumulus cell and it just so happens that this cell is one of the most poorly understood.

Here is a question for you, would you be comfortable eating meat from cloned animals? There are now hundreds of these animals on farms and the Food and Drug Administration is deciding if they are safe to eat and if their milk is safe to drink. Right now the agricultural industry is only maintaining a voluntary moratorium of using these animals. The American people have let their opinions be known, they don't want to eat cloned meat. In a recent poll, the question was asked, that if the FDA declared cloned meat as safe, would you eat it? Over 63% of the people taking the pole said no. I personally think that this is something that would have to be tested over a very long period of time. We know that the clones age quicker, could this cause cancer a few years after eating cloned meat? I wouldn't want to eat it. The FDA has already stated that there is no danger in eating cloned meat or drinking the milk of cloned animals but it is waiting to see what the reaction of the people to this decision is before they allow cloned products.

In Denmark scientists are all excited. They are attempting to produce pigs by cloning that have Alzheimer's. You may wonder why anyone would want to do this? I also wonder how they can be sure that the pig that they are cloning has this disease and not something else that just resembles it in pigdom? Well anyway, the answer is that they hope the offspring will have it at a young age, say one year old, so that they can test some new drugs on them. In this way, it is hoped that a cure for this disease can be found.

The word clone has become very popular, it seems to be on everyone's mind. Just look at how many pieces of software use the world clone in their title or how many times when some thing is copied it is said that it is cloned. It is almost like we are being indoctrinated to accept the fact that clones will be with us. It's funny, I was always for technology but the idea of clones makes me uneasy. It just brings up all sorts of questions, especially when we are talking about humans. I imagine that religious organizations will have a great problem with this, when and if human clones appear on the horizon.

Let's hope that the scientific community keeps a close reign on human cloning and that world governments keep their sanity and disallow the practice.