I know that human cloning (as long as you allow them to live to maturity) is controversial and I think illegal, bu what are the odds someone’s already done it?
I’ve cloned plants (asexually reproduced plants via cuttings) but I’ve never cloned a patented plant, which is illegal.
There’s no money in doing it in secret. I doubt it has happened.
Why is this in GD? Is there a debate here?
In the 1970s, someone claimed to have done it. But it was fake. And like @naita said, what’s the benefit of doing it in secret?
Oh, I don’t know. No billionaire out there that has lost a child in a tragic accident or the like? And then lost their mind a little?
I also doubt that it’s happened though.
It’s certainly possible. And there are academics who have gone as far as cloning human embryos but they did not go so far as to implant them.
There have yet to be any legitimate and believable claims that anybody has gone that far. The technology is certainly already there but the legal and ethical bits are very tricky, as you might imagine. It’s certainly possible somebody has done so clandestinely but, if so, they aren’t talking.
I could see it being done in secret so they could figure out if it’s even possible (and if it is, how to do it) before having to deal with public fallout. If it doesn’t work, no one knows and they never find themselves in the cross hairs of every media outlet.
If they announce that they’re going to attempt it, it’s not likely to ever get off the ground since it would be so controversial.
It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.
Looks like some monkeys have been cloned, but no apes yet. I imagine that would be the next step.
Only Mother Nature.
Identical twins are naturally occurring clones. As are identical triplets (very rare) and other hypothetical naturally occurring identical multiple births.
In theory, if you take a human embryo at a very early stage, like 4-8 cells, and split it you’ll get twins/triplets/clones. Not sure of the details, but if a human being has been cloned at this point my guess would be this is the most likely method used.
The technology to clone an adult human exists, at least in theory, but I’m not sure what the pay off would be. What would be the motivation?
If cloning were truly safe and you didn’t have the weird genetic problems and short lifespan that I think Dolly the sheep had, I could definitely see a market in cloning a child who was killed somehow (illness or accident). For example, if a couple is finally able to conceive through fertility treatments and then their baby or child dies, it might be easier to clone the kid than go through all of those fertility treatments again.
If my kid died, that would definitely be tempting – I already know how my kids came out, and it’s fantastic. Why roll the dice?
When it’s explained to them that it doesn’t instantly regenerate an identical 7-year-old like in a sci-fi B-movie, the appeal might diminish…
…but I guess that’s a fair point. Just having another baby with known genotype (provided you don’t imagine it will be a reincarnation of the exact same person) is not unreasonable.
I could also imagine an egotistical crackpot wanting to clone themselves - creating genetically identical offspring.
Back when she was alive, my grandmother said that she doesn’t thing cloning should be allowed, because she thought it was important for a person to have a mother. I’m not sure what she thought cloning was, but it was probably along those lines.
Shhh.
NASA Manager: “Maybe we should tell everybody that the mice we sent to space came back super intelligent.”
Mouse, dressed in suit, with British accent, turns around in swivel chair: “No. I don’t think we’ll be telling them THAT…”
Twins and clones are the same genetically, but there are few ethical differences.
I saw someone on TV who looked identical to me. I got mad, figuring some villainous scientist stole my DNA and cloned me! But, my daughter said, “no, that’s just Fabio.”
Cloning is the creation of an identical copy from an original template. I think that’s qualitatively different from dividing a zygote to create several simultaneous identical copies, none of which has any claim to be the original.
There have been several movies over the years about clones being grown and harvested for the benefit of rich people who then have identical gene-matched organs to harvest. Not saying it would ever be a scientific possibility, but lots of money + possibility of life extension? There’s your motivation!
No chance.
Assuming scientists get past the hurdles (and I assume they will) it’s basically ego stroking (from the scientist and possibly clone’s “parent”). One of these days a scientist will prove they’ve cloned someone, and I won’t be too upset, since other scientists will go “well then, never mind” and it will probably not get done again. Cloning body parts is something that’s actually useful.
The last human cloning experiment I heard of involved a scientist unethically compelling women to carry “clones” and it turned out he hadn’t successfully cloned anything. He just wanted the accolades of pulling it off. It was a bit like Theranos, one generation back, or those idiots who claimed they were in the World Trade Center towers on September 11th but weren’t even in New York that day.
Yep. Look, assumed you cloned Hitler. You would not get a person with his background, moral, ethics, or even his knowledge of German. He would just be a guy, that unless he grew that mustache, likely would not even look that much like the dead dictator.
But yeah- this could be a “good” reason, especially if the child died in infancy.
Or even organ harvesting. But even there, you would have to “grow” the clone to adulthood, and if you needed that kidney, 20 years is a bit long to wait.