Discussion on Human Cloning Technology

Strictly speaking, it would be legal to clone me,

for example,

tomorrow, and this is the place it's most likely to happen, a

leading IVF clinic outside of New York.

Behind those walls, there are people with the technology, the

ability, and the desire to genetically engineer

human

embryos, to be the first in the world to

successfully

clone a human being.

There's no doubt that human beings will be cloned.

Dr. Jacques Cohen-

It's really important to recall that technology-

-a leader in his field, simply needs the approval of his clinic's

ethics committee to make history.

-grows out of regulation.

So if I had the money, you had the permission, you could clone me

tomorrow?

Well, I wouldn't say tomorrow. It'll take a year or two.

We, we could, we could clone you probably within two

years.

What you're seeing here is an actual cloning taking

place at the research facility in Scotland that pioneered the

technique.

In theory, it's blindingly simple.

Here, it's an animal. But just as easily, you can take a

cell from a human. A scraping of skin will do.

Then get an egg from a female, remove the nucleus, and

fuse the two with a spark of electricity.

And ta-da, you have an

embryo. Implant the

embryo in a woman, and nine months later, you have

a carbon copy of the person from whom the skin scraping was

taken.