There's always been an argument, "to clone or not to clone." A recent study of public opinion in Great Britain found that 86% of people polled was against human reproductive cloning. Japan has drafted official government guidelines that ban research into human cloning. President Clinton has banned the spending of federal funds for human cloning experiments.

Even Ian Wilt, one of, "Dolly's", creators, does not approve of human cloning. When Dolly was cloned, they lost over 200 embryos. This is sad for animal embryos and would be even sadder for human embryos. Wilt wonders about the length of clone's life. Would it's life span be the length of the donor from the donor's, or only the length of the length of the remaining years of the donor at the time of the cloning. We need to know the answers to many questions before we start human cloning.

Some people believe that the cloning of humans is unnatural and against God's plan. They believe that children were meant to be created by a biological mother and father. Some worry that cloning will take away individual personalities and abilities. They fear that in the future," Hitler's", or ", Jack the Ripper's", could be created.

Not everyone is against the cloning of human beings. Some people see cloning as an answer for couples who are unable to have children. They don't think children need to have biological parent and see cloning as a way for anyone to have children.

They believe that studies of twins show that environment plays a big part in forming human personalities. These people think that clones growing up in different times, with different people in their lives would turn out to be different than their donors.

Some choices for cloning lie between these two views. Even Ian Wilmut thinks that the using of cloned animal embryos to cure such a serious disease, as cystic fibrosis is, "attractive". But some people still might object to the killing of animal embryos, or the transferring of anything from animals to humans.

People don't get so upset if you take the reproduction of humans out of the cloning picture. In some places food is scarce and people are starving. At Pennsylvania State University scientists have discovered how to clone cocoa trees from cocoa flowers. It is believed that through cloning healthier plants, healthier and greater plant yields can be produced. In Japan, scientists are trying to clone cows for a supply of beef which would be closer to home. At this time they rely too much on the importation of their beef supply.

Should we leave the solution of the cloning question to scientists and technologists? What do you think?

SHOULD WE CLONE OR NOT?