Hello, Hello, hold on ! this is not that exciting as it is made out, neither does this experiment send God packing back to his abode in heaven, leaving mankind to make copies of themselves without having to go through normal sexual reproduction yet ! Far from it !

This experiment is not even the first one in the field of cloning. Robert Briggs and Thomas J. King, in Philadelphia, had transplanted nuclear material way back in 1952. This was first done in amphibians, then extended to insects and fishes, later in 1980 to mammals. The oldest living cloner is DiBerardino, who claims that she devised this experiment long long ago. I am sure the Swedish Nobel Academy will have a tough time deciding who should get the Nobel this time around; as most of these bench experiments are done to bag a Nobel Prize ! I only hope that the wrong person does not get it as had happened in the past. To quote only one example in 1927 the Nobel for medicine went to Wagner Juregg, who claimed that he had developed a new fever therapy, using malarial parasites, for curing the then dreaded disease, general paralysis of the Insane (GPI) of syphilis.

In fact, Juregg was not the first to describe fever therapy, (it was done by Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine) and he had killed, in the bargain, twice as many, as he claimed to have saved unknowingly. The world of awards and prizes will always be the same. The really deserving would miss the bus time and again !

Be that as it may, let us quickly settle the fear in the minds of many that human copying is not far away. One can never clone a "self". A human being is much more than his genetic material. Even the genetic material in Dolly, the ewe produced by Ian Wilmut, is not complete vis-à-vis sexual reproduction. Dolly was the result of nuclear transplant of DNA derived from the adult mammary gland cell of a sheep (unfortunately Wilmut does not know whether the cell was an embryonic pleuripotent cell or a mature divided functional cell) on to the unfertilized egg cell with a jab of electric current. That shows that the whole male cell (spermatazoa) was not transplanted on to the egg cell. This leaves quite a few other DNA material from not only the nucleus but from the all powerful ‘organelle’ which are inside all our cells and they fuel all our metabolic demands. So Dolly is not a full lamb in the genetic sense.

That apart the offspring is not wholly the genetic material of the parents ! The genetic material derived from the parents has to change a lot in the environment before it penetrates to show its characteristics, called gene penetrance. Man, ultimately, is the product of genes and his environment. To give a few examples to lay readers, one could easily quote the study of "identical twins", derived from one single egg cell of the mother, (uniovular twins), if brought up separately immediately after birth, develop different characteristics. The genetic similarity between siblings is only around 50%. Hold on! it is not yet possible to produce human beings with their "consciousness" using cloning experiments.

Cloning in Greek means a twig. A twig will not always be the same as the parent tree. As the twig is bent ( by the environment ) so the tree also will grow bent. Another curious factor is that the ‘organelles’ referred to earlier have their own "consciousness" inside our cells. They are genetically not ours !! They are closer cousins of other micro-organisms in the world! Adult DNA, which Wilmut used, differs from the foetal DNA substantially and, can never produce an offspring like its parents. Nature does not show all her cards to scientists. We only scratch the surface and when we get to know a small fraction of the way Nature works, we get excited and claim to have divine powers !

" Man, proud man,
Dress’d with a brief sense of authority,
His glassy essence like an angry ape,
Performs such fantastic tricks against high heavens,
That even make the Angels weep "

said Shakespeare who was absolutely right with reference not only to politicians, but also scientists !

Having thus disposed of the Frankenstein’s monster, let us look at the brighter side of this experiment. Cloning would certainly help improve the process of animal husbandry. It will enable us to breed genetically desirable traits more efficiently. One could possibly clone the best milk cows. Even here one will have doubts. "Cloning will never replace selective breeding as a method of genetic engineering" was the opinion of Prof. Jon W. Gordon, at the department of Obstetrics, at Mount Sinai Medical School in New York City. He is right ! Cloning halts further progress. When one has cloned a cow, the same cow cannot breed further ! So do not worry, you can not clone a Hitler and make more Hitlers !

It may, however, help in cancer research ! Even that is a premature hope. Every cell holds within it the capacity to form every other cell in the body, but in the process, some messages are lost and others developed. If one could use cloning to suppress the cancer message , well and good. Let us hope for the best.

No need to panic. We have gone too far in our fear. Senator John J. Marchi of New York is ready with a bill in the senate that would make it a felony to do human cloning. Dear senator Marchi do not panic, it is not that bad after all ! Church also seems to be agitated that man is assuming the role of God. Never !

The people who have a field day and make tons of money are the science fiction writers selling their books by the millions C.J. Cherryli’s book Cyteen, Ira Levine’s book The Boys from Brazil, Arthur Clarke’s Imperial Earth, Ben Bora’s The Multiple Man, and Nancy Freedman’s Joshua, son of None, are a few. Make hay when the sun shines, boys! Cloning is exciting but poses no danger. "God gives and forgives. Man gets and forgets" !