What is the piece of information we are yet to figure out in order to clone a human, but is not needed when trying to clone a sheep?
There is none. Cloning humans is possible with current technology. There is a moratorium on cloning humans, but it is suspected someone has done it in secret.
I know for a fact they have cloned humans.
Yes I agree.
I too know for a fact that they have cloned humans.
Not that they can’t, but they won’t.
For each successful clone that’s reported in the news, there are dozens (if not hundreds) of unviable ones that either die before birth or have to be destroyed. With as much federal money going into genetic research, that’s bound to ruffle feathers on Capitol Hill.
Also, once a human clone is made, other questions are raised:
[ul]
[li]He’s now a human baby. Who is his guardian: the scientists? The female who incubated him? The gene donor? All three? (Granted, all three could be one person.)[/li][li]Evidence shows that DNA ages, because its ends become damaged after every duplication, which is one explanation of why we ultimately die, no matter how well we take care of ourselves. So a donor set of DNA is aged as old as the donor. Then a child is created that is genetically 30 years older, who will die of old age around 40-50. Is this ethical to create humans you know are going to die early?[/li][/ul]
Is that true? Really? Not that I doubt you but do you have a cite I can read on that from the web? That interests me!
This Mammoth thing that they are trying to clone. Say the succeed, but only to discover the Mammoth (even though drowned in a lake) was only 1 year from dying from old age. Wouldn’t that be a kicker.
WIGGUM,
It’s possible that a human has been cloned.
I do not believe, however, even for a moment, that you know this to be a fact.
Do you have some inside information that is not available to the rest of us? If so, would you share it with us?
If not, please refrain from making assertions that are not verifiable.
<explanation>
Dude…it was a joke…noticed how he made another post right after his first? That was his ‘clone’.
</explanation>
(God I have having to explain jokes…)
Actually, there is some new information that contradicts this claim. Read about it here.
I feel really, really stupid.
My apologies, WIGGUM.
You have my admiration. That was very clever, and I missed it.
I will try to pay closer attention in the future.
I was surprised to recently read that not all mammals are equally clonable, some are easier than others for some reason. I’d search for the article, but I’m kinda busy right now. But I’m pretty sure I read it (as opposed to imagining it).
It’s true that it is ethics and politics that prevents human cloning, but it is possible there will still be technical hurdles to cloning a human. I guess it’s also equally possible it will be easier to clone a human than a sheep, as well.
Maybe tonight I’ll do a search, if I remember.
Doubleclick- Thanks for the support.
Clairmont- Thank you. No apologies necessary. 
The main reason humans have not been cloned for now goes beyond ethics. It is definitely true that animals are not equally ‘cloneable.’ The reason Dolly the lamb was cloned was not because sheep are cute. People have been replacing DNA from one individual’s cell with the DNA from another (usually as whole nuclei) to try cloning.
The problem so far is that we don’t understand how we got the clones in the first place. The primate (Andi) that was cloned recently used a different method from Dolly. Basically, people try a variety of methods, such as directly injecting a nucleus or fusing cells using electric shock. They got Dolly by starving the cells, which put them in sync cell-cycle wise, which apparently helped (so one cell wasn’t thinking time to make more DNA, while the nucleus was thinking time to chill out a while). The same procedure doesn’t work for a lot of animals.
Most animals that have been cloned are still only a few that survive out of tens or hundreds of attempts. I heard recently that human cells have been cloned, but not grown, so we may be arguing the ethics sooner than we thought.
I think it’s inevitable that some rich person will eventually set up a secret project to clone him or herself.
There is a big spread about human cloning in the new issue of Wired (Feb 2001).
I have not read all of it, but the basic points are as follows:
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It is certainly possible to clone a human.
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A scientist working in the USA successfully reverted a human donor cell to omnipotential (or whatever it is called, stem-cell state) state, and allowed it to go through a few dozen divisions before voluntarily discontinuing the experiment. Similar results have been reported by researchers in some Asian country (I forget which).
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While there are laws in many countries against human clones, those laws are not universal.
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“Experts” (I am somewhat dubious of this reference) have said that they believe that a human clone has already been made in secret.
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Wired claims to be in contact with an undisclosed source with the motivation and means to clone a human. It is scheduled to take place sometime this year.
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A whole bunch of the people who are pushing for clones are poor pathetic people who managed to save a genetic sample from their dearly departed, and somehow assume that the clone will bring back, for example, their dead children. Get it straight people: a clone is JUST a genetic copy.
Andi wasn’t a clone. Andi was the first monkey that was genetically engineered.
The reason humans can’t be cloned at the moment is that for every cloned animal that’s born, there are a whole lot of unsuccessful attempts. It would be impractical and unethical to get dozens of women to try to be surrogate mothers just to produce one baby.