• Question: Would you be able to make ab clone of something?

    Asked by anon-193421 to Morwenna, Jamal, iainstaniland, Heidi, Emma, Carl on 10 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: Carl Heron

      Carl Heron answered on 10 Nov 2018:

      Hi Fatima,
      Not personally. But animals can be cloned – look up Dolly the Sheep, cloned in the 1990s. Recently two monkeys were cloned. Cloning of humans is banned in many countries, including the UK. Whether we should clone or not is the subject of ethical, biological and social issues. For example, we need to be very clear why we are doing this sort of research and what the implications are for everyone.
      Carl

    • Photo: Emma Crawford

      Emma Crawford answered on 11 Nov 2018:

      I personally can’t clone anything but I remember learning about the infamous Dolly the sheep cloning in my science lessons at school!

    • Photo: Heidi Gardner

      Heidi Gardner answered on 12 Nov 2018:

      It’s definitely possible to make clones of animals and probably humans too – but there are lots and lots of questions about this that science hasn’t answered yet, or isn’t able to answer. The ethics of cloning is a difficult topic, and we have to ask ourselves why we might want to make a clone of something; after all, the thing that you’re cloning probably doesn’t have the power to say whether it wants to be cloned!
      Science is making some amazing advances, but it’s important that the ethical questions catch up before we use the techniques that we have – we need to make sure that people are happy and safe above everything else 🙂

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