Dolly deserved better; don't humans, too?

Cloning, also called somatic cell nuclear transfer, is a process of bypassing sexual reproduction and using science to produce a genetic twin of an organism. In this process, the nucleus of a somatic cell (any 'body' cell other than an egg or sperm) is placed in an unfertilized egg cell where the nucleus has been removed. A small electric jolt is then used to stimulate the development of this being.

If the embryo survives for 5-6 days in culture, its fate depends on the goals of the research. If the researcher wants the embryo to be born, then the embryo is placed in a surrogate womb and continues to develop. If the researcher wants to experiment on the embryo, the embryo is disposed of and its life is ended when it is no longer useful.

Even though cloning was once considered science fiction, it became a reality on February 27, 1997. On this date, English scientists announced that they had used the somatic cell nuclear transfer process described above to create a cloned sheep named Dolly. In this experiment it took 277 attempts at cell manipulation and 29 embryo implants before Dolly was born. This means that 276 sheep embryos, fetuses, and newborns died to create a single sheep.

Cloning which isn't therapeutic With the emergence of embryonic stem cell research, the term "therapeutic cloning" has been introduced into the debate surrounding human cloning. Besides being linguistically misleading, this term seems to indicate there is more than one type of cloning, but the only difference between so-called therapeutic cloning and reproductive cloning is the clone's purpose in life. While reproductive cloning tries to create a being whose purpose is to be born, therapeutic cloning tries to create a being whose only purpose in life is to be killed for medical research.

Some biotechnology companies hope to use cloning as a way of mass producing human embryos in order to remove their stem cells. Embryonic stem cells aren't from a person's own body, so they face the risk of the patient's body rejecting them. Some researchers hope to get around this problem by using cloning to create embryonic clones of patients and then kill the clones in order to harvest their stem cells. Unfortunately, this "therapy" isn't very helpful to the unborn child whose only utilitarian purpose in life is to be sacrificed for the patient.

This method of "therapy" is another step in the attempt to destroy the sanctity of human life. Humans are no longer unique individuals with inalienable rights, but are becoming disposable products that can be experimented on and then thrown away when no longer useful.

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