Quotes on cloning

Ian Wilmut, one of the scientists who cloned Dolly ---

"[About ] the tone of the response [to the announcement of the successful cloning of Dolly], I’ve been slightly disappointed in the public’s rather limited concentration on science-fiction applications. If there were more interest in the potential beneficial applications, I would be more comfortable."

"There are still no reasons I would find [he idea of copying a person] acceptable."

"... each child who is born should be treated an individual. If you make a copy of a person, you are saying that you don’t want a child, but a person just like the one you’re cloning. If you clone a running back, for example, you’re saying to that child, “Don’t be you, be a running back.” You’re choosing his path for him."

"Cloning doesn’t offer any opportunity you can’t get from oocyte donation."

Arthur Caplan, Center of Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania ---

"Think of current cloning technology along the lines of the Wright brothers first airplane flight. Many argued that human beings would never fly in a machine. The Wright brothers proved them wrong. But it took many years before the first safe, reliable and practical aircraft was up in the air.

The same is true of cloning. The sheep in Scotland and the monkeys in Oregon represent first steps down what is a very long road. They show cloning is possible but they do not prove it is practical. The techniques used are not only not safe to try in humans, they are still not very effective or efficient for use in animals."

Lee Silver,a biologist at Princeton University, and author of Remaking Eden: Cloning and Beyond in a Brave NewWorld ---

"I don't think that [human] cloning will ever be common, in the same way that in vitro fertilisation is not common. But I think it will eventually be accepted and used by a small minority of people in special circumstances."

"Human cloning will not harm people if couples use it to have children that they're going to love, and the children are healthy. Many... would see laws banning cloning as irrational, and they would try to get around them..."

"I think it's important to distinguish the science-fiction scenarios from reality. The science-fiction scenarios are little armies of Hitlers running around. But governments are not going to clone people. Governments do not reproduce. People reproduce, and we have to get back to a basic biological fact, which is that people want to have children to raise and to love. This is part of our nature. Governments have never produced children, and I don't think that they ever will."

"Is it possible that an all-women society could go off and establish itself on other worlds? Yes, but I don't see it happening on Earth."

"There are a lot of scientists who are perplexed by the public outcry, but they are afraid of public opinion. They don't want to confront this outcry and say: "You don't know what you're talking about, you're wrong." There could be a backlash that would make it more difficult for them to conduct their research. Whether or not they think human cloning is bad, it is easy to condemn it when a ban would have no effect on their own research."

"It's going to take some time. Nobody in their right mind would think about cloning a human being today. I think what those people are doing, quietly, is trying to get cell fusion to work with human oocytes and somatic cells, trying to get the initial embryonic divisions to take place, and that's perfectly legal in the US at this point in time. Ultimately, I think a safe method could be perfected. But they are going to have to wait for many monkeys to be born without birth defects before they attempt it in humans."

Richard Seed, eccentric planning to open the first human cloning clinic ---

"Gradually, the ethical positions [towards human cloning] will change, and they will change when there are half a dozen bouncing baby clones."