Ignorance Is Not Bliss: Why a Ban on Human Cloning Is Unacceptable
![handle is hein.journals/hmax9 and id is 317 raw text is: NOTE
IGNORANCE IS NOT BLISS: WHY A
BAN ON HUMAN CLONING IS
UNACCEPTABLE
Shannon H. Smitht
CLONING IS NOT A NEW TECHNIQUE. In fact, clones,
precise genetic cop[ies] of a molecule, cell, plant, animal, or hu-
man being,1 have been around for years. Genetically identical
copies of whole organisms in plant breeding, known as varieties,
are commonplace. Additionally, some forms of invertebrates, such
as certain kinds of worms, can regenerate another entire organism
from a small piece of themselves.3 While vertebrates do not have
this ability, the cloning of vertebrates does occur naturally through
the formation and birth of identical twins.4
The first artificially occurring clone was created in the 1970s
when Dr. John Gurdon successfully cloned a frog.5 Dr. Gurdon
replaced the nucleus of an embryonic frog cell, much larger and
easier to manipulate than those of mammals, with that of another
cell from a different frog. Although the frogs never reached adult-
t B.A., North Carolina State University, 1996; J.D. Candidate, Case Western
Reserve University School of Law, 1999. The Author would like to thank Professor
Maxwell Mehlman for his invaluable comments and accessibility, and Chet Aaron
Smith for his encouragement and support throughout the writing of this Note.
1 NAT'L BIoETlncs ADVISORY COMM'N, 1 CLONING HUMAN BEINGS 1, 13
(1997) [hereinafter NBAC] (stating that cloning has been an agricultural practice for
many years and is a foundation of modem biological research).
See id. at 14.
3 See id. (noting that regeneration from a small piece is not necessarily an in-
vertebrate worm's usual mode of reproduction).
4 See id. (indicating that there is a natural form of cloning by humans and other
mammals, but it occurs by chance with the separation of a single embryo into halves
during early development).
Discussion of Dr. Gurdon's experiments with frogs is attributed to Michael
Specter & Gina Kolata, After Decades of Missteps, How Cloning Succeeded, N.Y.
TIMES, Mar. 3, 1997, at Al.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/hmax9&div=16&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Ignorance Is Not Bliss: Why a Ban on Human Cloning Is Unacceptable
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