• Question: is it possible to make clones?

    Asked by anon-181170 on 5 Jun 2018.
    • Photo: Alex Haragan

      Alex Haragan answered on 5 Jun 2018:

      Yes – we already have!

      You’ll be too young to remember when Dolly the sheep was made (back in 1996) but I’m sure you’ve heard of her.
      She was the first mammal to be cloned.
      There were some issues (not least they used adult sheep cells to make a baby sheep) but it was proved to be possible.
      In the 20 odd years since then – we have made considerable progress.
      Cloning mammals is possible and has been achieved many times.
      Cloning humans is more problematic – we are more complicated, and perhaps more importantly the ethics or morals around if we should clone or not is a fiercely argued area!
      Cloning human organs has been achieved – and there is a view in medicine (which I share) that cloning individual organs (like a kidney) to use in people who have a damaged one and need a replacement should be routinely done.
      Although we can transplant things like kidneys and livers from donors – the fact is there are many, many more people waiting for one that there are people who can donate. In addition – just like giving blood you need to be “matched” to a similar type, but if you could clone one it’d be (theoretically) a much closer match.

      However – I suspect you really meant can we clone a fully working human? Again the answer is probably yes – but no-one has done that yet. Its important to remember that even if you did clone someone, the resulting person would be very different – as its your experience that makes a large amount of what makes you you (which is why even identical twins are different people).
      Can it be done? I believe the early stage of cloning human cells and making a viable embryo has been done (and then “sacrificed” at an early stage) – but human cloning like this is banned in most countries, and its difficult to see the practical application of cloning a whole human. Coupled with the strong ethical debate about it being wrong – and I don’t think we’ll see whole human clones anytime soon.
      But yes I would say it is possible.

    • Photo: Donna MacCallum

      Donna MacCallum answered on 5 Jun 2018:

      yes – you ca get your dog cloned in Korea or China and Scotland cloned Dolly the sheep! We don’t clone people yet

    • Photo: Hannah Farley

      Hannah Farley answered on 5 Jun 2018:

      Alex has done a super long answer to this but yes.We haven’t cloned a human, we probably could but we maybe shouldn’t – how do you know they won’t develop early onset Alzheimer’s or something like that?

    • Photo: Ashley Akbari

      Ashley Akbari answered on 5 Jun 2018:

      Alex has given a great answer to this – its not so much a question of “if we can” but “if we should” now

    • Photo: Helen Cooper

      Helen Cooper answered on 5 Jun 2018:

      I think everyone else has already mentioned that we can and do, but only in animals right now which is probably for the best from an ethical point of view.

      At work we have inbred mice (brother and sisters breeding) that have been inbred for some many generations that all of the mice are 99% genetically similar so they are practically clones! This means that when we run studies, the genetics of these mice won’t be a variable.

    • Photo: Claire Donald

      Claire Donald answered on 8 Jun 2018:

      Cloning is part of my job! Not humans or animals but bacteria. I can make them express some DNA I’m interested in and then I let them multiply. All the new bacteria are now clones of the first bacterium and they contain the DNA I want. I can then take my DNA out of the bacteria and use it in my experiments.

      You can also clone plants at home easily by taking a cutting ( like a branch) from one plant and planting it in fresh, moist soil. If the conditions are right, the branch should make new roots and the new plant is a clone of the original plant.

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