• Question: is cloning illegal?

    Asked by anon-220349 on 12 Jun 2019.
    • Photo: Rebecca Moon

      Rebecca Moon answered on 12 Jun 2019:


      It is illegal for a cloned human embryo to be implanted into a womb, but cloned embryos can be used in research as long as they are not allowed to develop into humans. I think the law is different with regards to cloning of plants and animals.

    • Photo: Rebecca Moon

      Rebecca Moon answered on 12 Jun 2019:


      It is illegal for a cloned human embryo to be implanted into a womb, but cloned embryos can be used in research as long as they are not allowed to develop into humans. I think the law is different with regards to cloning of plants and animals.

    • Photo: Deepak Chandrasekharan

      Deepak Chandrasekharan answered on 13 Jun 2019:


      In the UK, human cloning is illegal as is the cloning of animals for non-research purposes. As Rebecca says, embryos can be cloned for research alone – this is mainly to study stem cells.

      This is a useful resource here:

      https://www.ed.ac.uk/roslin/about/dolly/facts/cloning

    • Photo: Nina Rzechorzek

      Nina Rzechorzek answered on 13 Jun 2019:


      Great resource that Deepak has already suggested from the Roslin Institute – where I used to work (small claim to fame is that I actually met Dolly when she was alive and used to work in an office next door to the man who created her – Professor Sir Ian Wilmut). He features in this video which discusses some of the uses of cloning and the ethics around it:

      As well as using embryonic stem cells, many labs are now moving towards generating and using induced pluripotent stem cell (iPS) lines – this incredible technology has revolutionised cell biology (including my own work which largely uses iPS cell lines to make human brain cells in the lab). Here is a nice overview of iPS technology:

    • Photo: Kaitlin Wade

      Kaitlin Wade answered on 13 Jun 2019:


      Cloning human cells is legal if they are not able to then develop into humans. It’s basically illegal if the cloned cells are being used for non-research purposes.

    • Photo: David Wilson

      David Wilson answered on 13 Jun 2019:


      If we’re talking about human cloning then there’s a convenient list here with the current cloning laws in different countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_cloning#Current_law
      There’s lots of interesting info on that page about cloning, a lot of cell biologists will use cloning technology to produce identical copies of cells. As you can see from that wiki page we’ve successfully cloned a number of different higher organisms too such as sheep, fish, cows and dogs.
      The ethical question of cloning is really important, if we can clone then should we clone?
      Why should we clone intelligent animals but not humans? One use of cloning would be for organ repair and transplantation. At the moment you can receive an organ from a donor but you need to have you immune system repressed to prevent organ rejection. However, if you were to clone an organ for transplantation so it was an identical genetic match to your original one then immune suppression wouldn’t be required because your body would recognise it as “self”.
      Do you think this would be an ok use of cloning?

    • Photo: Matthew Bareford

      Matthew Bareford answered on 13 Jun 2019:


      Cloning is highly regulated, and only some cloning is illegal. As the others have said, cloning humans or animals is illegal (non-research)

      But cloning human cells which will not be developed into an embryo/human is already being done and extremely useful in research

    • Photo: Kate Timms

      Kate Timms answered on 17 Jun 2019:


      There are very tight laws and guidelines around cloning in the UK. Animals can only be cloned for research purposes and any human cloned embryos wouldn’t be allowed to develop into babies.

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