David Shapshak
Cloning’s advantages are numerous, from reproducing endangered animal species to breeding human organ transplant material.
The public fears of cloning do not differ much from those expressed by science fiction writers in the last century, mostly the self-replication of dictators. Saddam Hussein could resist any American smart bombs’ attacks by cloning himself infinitely.
Could Adolf Hitler be brought back to life if we had a scraping of his cellular tissue?
To paraphrase Groucho Marx, the kind of people who want an exact replica of themselves are not the kind of people we want replicated.
Conversely, scientists could learn all they wanted to about prehistoric creatures through cloning. That’s not considering that given the present success rate of about one in 400, hundreds of human foetuses would die before a single being could be born.
But morality aside, there’s also the cost. In vitro fertilisation – where the egg and sperm of a couple are fused in a laboratory and inserted into the woman’s womb – costs a cool R25 000 in South Africa.