Elizabeth Cohen: Human cloning debate heats up

Human cloning has taken on a new debate as lawmakers in Washington consider legislation to ban the controversial -- and as yet unfulfilled -- procedure. CNN Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen elaborates on human cloning and its ramifications.

Q: How far away are scientists from cloning humans?

COHEN: No one really knows exactly how far scientists are, because the groups that are trying to clone human beings aren't giving regular updates.

Here's what we do know from the two groups that claim to be actively trying to make a human clone. One group has left the U.S. Another group, called the Raelians, won't say if they're working in the U.S. or abroad. They also won't say how far along they are. They told us last March that by the end of April, they might be ready to impregnate a woman with the world's first clone, but they won't say anything more until the woman has given birth to a healthy baby.

So basically we don't know how far along these groups are, but they've said that Dolly the sheep was cloned more than four years ago, and it's not so hard to adjust the technology to clone a human being.

Q: How does human cloning work?

COHEN: Many people have this vision that if you clone, say, Sam, a 30-year-old man, you do some kind of scientific procedure and you instantly get a 30-year-old who looks just like the original Sam.

Wrong.

Here's how it really would works (if it's even possible in humans): Scientists would take a cell from Sam -- it could be a skin cell or theoretically any cell -- and take the nucleus out.

The nucleus contains all the genetic material. The scientists would then take an egg from a woman and take out the nucleus, and instead put in the nucleus from Sam's cell. They would then add a spark of electricity to make the cell divide, turning it into an embryo.

And here's the part people often forget: You have to put that embryo into a woman's uterus so it can grow into a full-term baby. That baby would then be Sam's clone, or to put it another way, Sam's genetically identical twin who would be 30 years younger than Sam.

Q: What kind of scientific opportunity does cloning offer, if any, in terms of treating disease and ailments?

COHEN: First, let's make a distinction between human cloning and therapeutic cloning.

In human cloning, as described above, you create a living, breathing baby -- a woman would actually give birth.

In therapeutic cloning, you clone a cell in order to study it, and to perhaps create therapeutic treatments from it. Scientists would work with these cloned cells, but they would never be implanted into a woman's uterus so they wouldn't become a full-grown baby.

Q: Why are some people unhappy with the possibility of human cloning? What are the ethical implications?

COHEN: Surveys show that most people are unhappy with the thought of human cloning. To put it simply, it grosses people out.

Cloning elicits a very visceral reaction -- it's simply yicky, for many people, to think that you could make a copy of a human being. They also worry that some evil person might clone himself over and over again creating an army of evil people working in unison.

Some bioethicists, while they don't necessarily support cloning, have said that these worries really aren't warranted. They point out that just because two people are genetically identical does not mean they will have the same character. They say environment makes a difference, and point to genetically identical twins who look exactly alike but are often different in behavior and actions.