• Question: Is cloning humans possible?

    Asked by 466gdna29 to Arthur, Clare, Daniel, David, Tora on 13 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Clare Harding

      Clare Harding answered on 13 Nov 2014:

      A lot of people are working on cloning human organs, this means that if you needed a new heart or lungs, they could potentially grow you one using just some of your skin cells which would mean you dont need to wait for an organ doner which would be amazing.

      Cloning a whole human would be tricky, I think that if we tried hard we could do it, but just now there are a lot of ethical problems and we have no idea if the human would be healthy their entire life.

    • Photo: Daniel Parsons

      Daniel Parsons answered on 14 Nov 2014:

      Its is probably biologically possible to clone a human. Scientists have been able to clone a whole host of animals including mice, cats, sheep, pigs and even cows. However, for each one, researchers came across problems that needed to be overcome with trial and error – there are more complex issues with Humans (and primates) in that so far scientists have not been able to get the cells where the nucleus has been replaced – to generate the right proteins. Finally, given the amount of trial and error needed many foetuses don’t develop properly and die..there are thus HUGE ethical issues about whether it is right to do this work.

    • Photo: Tora Smulders-Srinivasan

      Tora Smulders-Srinivasan answered on 18 Nov 2014:

      It is definitely possible in humans, but the numbers of trials you’d have to go through to get viable embryos, it’s just not ethical!

      They went through hundreds of sheep embryos/trials to get Dolly!

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