Human cloning - how to do it.
Below you will see some cloning images which will help explain how a human clone will be made.
Cloning yourself is quite simple - a scientist even did it with a cow's egg, but he destroyed the embryo before implantation. However huge risks of mutation with human cloning.
Two cells fuse to become one. The egg gains a full set of genes from the adult and thinks it has been fertilised. It begins to divide to become an identical twin (clone) of the adult. As with Dolly the sheep. However, the cloned baby could have genes that are as old as the older cloned twin.
I met a British scientist who wanted to clone an embryo, implant it in the womb and cull it for spares for the older twin. Actually this is THE ONLY way that so-called therapeutic cloning could produce organs and organised tissues rather than just collections of cells in a lab - unless you take organs after birth.
The argument could go like this: child is dying, use cells and a human egg to clone child. Implant clone into mother in poor nation - pay her $10,000. Take baby from her at birth. Remove tissues needed after birth - say a kidney at the age of two - and offer cloned child for adoption. Child remains healthy on one kidney, older twin life is saved. Childless couple get a baby. Poor mother gets an income. But I don't want to live in a world like that. And as I say, huge emotional and phyical risks for the younger child.
WWW Author Dr Patrick Dixon
