SCOPE:

When newspaper headlines informed the world on February 22, 1997, that a sheep (whimsically named Dolly, after country-western singer Dolly Parton) had been cloned from an udder cell of an adult ewe in Scotland, many people panicked. If a mammal had been cloned, they assumed, the cloning of humans could not be far behind.   Scenarios of what human cloning might mean, most of them nightmarish, almost immediately began to appear in opinion articles and television commentaries. Indeed, fears of human cloning were so strong that less than a week after the sheep cloning announcement, U.S. President Bill Clinton called for a ban on the use of federal funding for any research that might lead to human cloning, and bills intended to ban all human cloning research outright were quickly introduced in both the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Supporters maintain that cloning has many potential benefits. For instance, Elizabeth Pennisi explains in Science that the goal of the scientists who created Dolly is to produce herds of cloned animals with inserted genes that will cause their bodies to make human hormones, drugs, and other substances useful in medicine. Such procedures could lower the cost of compounds currently available only in very tiny amounts. Other supporters claim that it could bring new hope to infertile couples who desperately want a child and are unable to have one in any other way.  (Opposing Viewpoints 2000) 

BACKGROUND INFORMATION:

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SPEECH TABLE ITEMS
CQ Researcher Issues
    Organ Shortage 2003 p.153+
    Food Safety 2002 p.897+
    Embryo Research 1999 p.1065+
    The Cloning Controversy 1997 p. 409+

The Ethics of Human Cloning:  at issue series

Cloning:  contemporary issues companion

Cloning: at issue series

AUDIO/VISUAL ITEMS
The Ethics of Cloning
VIDEO QH442.2.E84 1997 

REFERENCE ITEMS
Encyclopedia of Social Issues
REF HN 57 .E59

Encyclopedia of Bioethics
REF HM 30 .E52

The Gale Encyclopedia of Science
REF Q 121 .G35

McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology
REF Q 121 .M3  

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