Le clonage

Cloning

Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned from a somatic (body) cell, came into the world innocent as a lamb. However, soon after the announcement of her birth in February 1997 (Wilmut et al., 1997) she caused panic and controversy. An important, and for many people troubling question arose: if the cloning of sheep is possible, will scientists soon start cloning humans as well; and if they did, would this be wrong or unwise?

For most people, Dolly was really a wolf in sheep's clothing. She represented a first undesirable and dangerous step to applying reproductive cloning in humans, something that many agreed should never be done. Only a small minority thought it was permissible, or even morally obligatory to conduct further research into human reproductive cloning. Some had no strong objections to it, but did not see any reason to promote it either.

Dolly is now stuffed and set up for display in the National Museum of Scotland. Many countries or jurisdictions have legally banned human cloning or are in the process of doing so. In some countries, including France and Singapore, reproductive cloning of humans is a criminal offence. In 2005, the United Nations adopted a ‘Declaration on Human Cloning’, which calls for a universal ban on human cloning. The debate on human reproductive cloning seems to have drawn to a close. However, since reproductive cloning of mammals has become routine in several countries, there is reason to believe that at some point in the future, humans will be cloned too. Moreover, even if reproductive cloning will not be possible in the near future, cloning for research and therapeutic purposes is likely to be.

This entry describes the most important areas of disagreement regarding the ethics of cloning. I will focus on human cloning (as opposed to animal cloning), since human cloning has been the focus of the cloning debate.

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