Future+Impact


 * __Future Impacts __**

What does the future of Cloning hold in store for us? The one thing that is sure, is that the future is unsure. However, there are a few things we could probably expect and look forward to (or not look forward to, depending on your view of the matter).

Scientists have been cloning as early as the 1950's, but were still unable to acomplish the much more difficult task of cloning mammals. It wasn't until 1984 that the first mammal, a live lamb, was cloned from immature sheep embryo cells. After this, there were many more farm animal cloning using the same nuclear transfer process. However, Dolly the Sheep was the first mammal to be cloned using adult cells in 1996 (Lim, 2006). This is the key that opened the door to the future!

Since Dolly the sheep, everyone is now thinking about human cloning. What was once an impossible fairytale is now very possible. If other mammals can be cloned using adult cells, then why not humans? It seems like human cloning is the inevitable future. How many of you would like to see yourself cloned? Without knowing any of you, I would guess that most probably said no! This is the problem that we are now facing (if you want to call it a problem). People are afraid of human cloning. There are tons of ethical deliema's that are created with the decision of human cloning. To discover some of these ethical deliema's and the reasons why people are afraid of human cloning, check out the Ethical Considerations  section of our website.

Since the thought of human cloning people have had worries. So much so, that in 1997, a legislation to ban the cloning of humans for at least 5 years was proposed by President Clinton. The USA is not the only country that had this fear of human cloning. In 1998, nineteen European nations also signed a ban on human cloning ("Cloning timeline", n.d.).

**STEP INTO THE TIME MACHINE TO VIEW CLONING IN THE FUTURE**