The Cloning DilemmaMan is rapidly approaching the reality of cloning a human being. Once considered a fantastic vision imagined by imaginative novelists, the possibility of creating a person in the absence of sexual intercourse has crossed the boundaries of science fiction and entered our lives. Although genetic engineering has helped improve the quality of life for many people, it poses many ethical and moral questions that few are prepared to answer. The most current and volatile debate over human cloning seemed to emerge when the existence of Dolly, a clone sheep, was announced on February 23, 1997 by Ian Wilmut and colleagues at the Roslin Institute in Scotland. The cloning technique, never successfully performed before on mammals, involved transplanting the genes of an adult male sheep with a differentiated somatic cell and transferring them into the egg of a female sheep, from which the nucleus had been removed. Because Dolly contained DNA from only one parent, she was considered the "delayed" genetic twin of a single adult sheep (1). Numerous other genetic clones have been announced since the spring of 1998, including the Massachusetts Cell Research Society's declaration of "engineered livestock" and talk of a cloned mouse in June (2). Skeptics wondered: If animals like mice and sheep can be cloned, what frontiers would remain beyond us? Recent Clinton administration legislation, following the announcement of Dolly's birth, prohibited any funding whatsoever to support science geared towards human cloning. "I personally believe that human cloning raises profound concerns given our cherished concepts of faith and humanity," the President said in a national radio address in June 1997 (3). to do so, and the prospect of cloning a human being is an issue that must be carefully considered by both scientists and legislators. It is an event that can shape the history of humanity, but it is also an event that can create history in itself.Works Cited(1) http://bioethics.gov/pubs/cloning1/executive.htm(2) http: / /www.reason. com/biclone.html(3) http://www.reson.com/biclone.html(4) http://www.reason.com/opeds/eibert.html(5) http://www.nejm. org/content/1998/0338/0013/0905.asp#tref-6(6) http://www.nejm.org/content/1998/0338/0013/0905.asp#ref-6(7) "Cloning : Legal, medical, ethical and social issues". Hearing before the Subcommittee on Health and Environment of the Committee on Commerce.Sequence No. 105-70. February 12, 1998. Pg. 14(8) http://cgi.pathfinder.com/time/magazine/articles/0,3266,17681,00.html