Earlier this week scientists at the Oregon Health and Science University reported they had produced embryonic stem cells from a cloned human embryo. Here are 9 things you should know about human cloning:
1. Cloning is a form of reproduction
in which offspring result not from the chance union of egg and sperm
(sexual reproduction) but from the deliberate replication of the genetic
makeup of another single individual (asexual reproduction). Human
cloning, therefore, is the asexual production of a new human organism
that is, at all stages of human development, genetically virtually
identical to a currently existing or previously existing human being.
2. Human cloning is achieved by a technique referred to as somatic
cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). The process involves introducing material
from the nucleus of a human somatic cell (any biological cell forming
the body of an organism, though for the purposes of SCNT, usually a skin
cell) into an oocyte (a female egg cell that has not yet gone through
the process to become an ovum) whose own nucleus has been removed or
inactivated. The oocyte becomes an ovum that now no longer needs to be
fertilized, because it contains the correct amount of genetic material.
This new entity begins dividing and growing, yielding a cloned human
embryo. Continue at Joe Carter
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