LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Human Cloning: Human Beings
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Prior to the announcement by Dr. Richard Seed that he would begin using this technology as an alternative for infertile couples, a temporary moratorium on any attempts to clone an adult human being was proposed. While such a moratorium is generally accepted by most groups, further consensus on how these activities should be treated remains elusive. Legal, religious, moral and scientific considerations are intertwined with a complexity found in few other areas of public concern. Created hastily, most state and federal legislative proposals are criticized as being overly broad and based on uninformed analysis.
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One conclusion from the conference was that there should be no attempt at reproductive cloning in humans. The Ethics Committee of the Human Genome Organisation released their statement on cloning which said that they rejected reproductive cloning in human beings, saying that it should not be attempted. Secondly, they supported cloning for the production of cells and tissues for transplantation. They ... supported cloning to investigate how genes function and they felt that cloning should be used to avoid disease. This was provided that the disease is caused by 'mitochondrial DNA' as opposed to DNA found in the nucleus of a cell.
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The Society for Developmental Biology has issued a position statement supporting a voluntary moratorium on cloning human beings (for reproduction). This is supported by the Society for the Study of Reproduction (statement)
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In December 2002, Clonaid, the medical arm of a religion called Raëlism, who believe that aliens introduced human life on Earth, claimed to have successfully cloned a human being. They claim that aliens taught them how to perform cloning, even though the company has no record of having successfully cloned any previous animal. A spokesperson said an independent agency would prove that the baby, named Evá, is in fact an exact copy of her mother. Shortly thereafter, the testing was cancelled, with the spokesperson claiming the decision would ultimately be left up to Evá's parents.
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As indicated above, nuclear transplant technology is not synonymous with human cloning, but is merely a technique which may be used to accomplish the latter. Short of actually cloning human beings, this technology holds great promise for the medical and biotechnology industries as well as for the production of livestock. “Work with [nuclear transplantation technology] is already providing unparalleled insights into fundamental biological processes and promises to provide great practical benefit in terms of improved livestock, improved means of producing pharmaceutical proteins, and prospects for regeneration and repair of human tissues.”[9]
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[J]ust because human beings can be cloned, should they be? Even if some good arguments could be developed for giving it a role in human reproduction, are the benefits worth the risks? Many theologians, ethicists and religious leaders, though certainly not all, oppose cloning humans. Some are concerned about potential effects on the family. Some worry about the potential for making commodities of children; others are concerned about creating children to fill predetermined roles, such as a gifted athlete or scholar, based on talents of the cell donor.
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