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Newsela | 20 years since the first sheep was cloned - are we ready for humans?

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How far have humans gone since the first cloned mammal was born in 1996?

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Newsela | Chinese scientists have successfully cloned two monkeys

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After many failures, scientists have introduced two successfully cloned baby monkeys.

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Newsela | Time Machine (1997): The start of something big?

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. The word itself probably conjures images from a science fiction movie, in which an evil genius creates clones of himself. With an army of genetically-identical twins at his command, the mastermind then proceeds to take over the world!

But is merely the stuff of movies? Or is the science behind it real? Exactly what is and how can it be used in the real world? These are questions that scientists all over the world have been attempting to answer for years.

The subject of hit the front pages of newspapers around the world in 1997 when scientists in Great Britain successfully cloned a . Dolly the , as she was known, was different from every other that had ever been born before. How so? She was the sister of her mother and did not have a father!

Dolly's life began when a single was taken from the of her mother. Scientists extracted the DNA from that . DNA stands for deoxyribonucleic acid, and it contains the particular that is the unique for every living organism.

Each one of your body's cells contains DNA, and your DNA is unique, like your fingerprint, because it defines who you are apart from everyone else in the world. Once the DNA was extracted from the taken from Dolly's mother, it was then into an taken from another .

Before implanting, however, the DNA from the is removed. Therefore, when the DNA from Dolly's mother was into the , it replicated to create more cells with the same DNA as Dolly's mother. These cells were then into a and Dolly was born: a clone of her mother and without a biological father.

This process that we call actually has a scientific name: nuclear . And it's not quite as easy as it sounds. It took scientists decades to perfect the process that led to the successful birth of Dolly the . Since that time, many other animals have been successfully cloned, including mice, cows, chickens, cats, deer, dogs, horses, mules, oxen, rabbits, and rats.

But why would they do this in the first place? Are they attempting to create a army to dominate the world? Not quite! Many scientists hope that technology can be developed to the point where human stem cells, considered the building blocks of the body, can be created in a laboratory .

Stem cells, when into the body, can grow into just about any type of . Scientists believe stem cells might one day be used as part of treatments to cure diseases like and Parkinson's disease.

Of course, many people worry that scientists will perfect to the point where it's possible to clone an existing human being. Experts note that modern science is a long way from being able to do such a thing. They also point out that creating a clone of an existing human being would not create a of that person.

Identical twins, despite sharing the same DNA, have unique fingerprints. If you've ever known a set of identical twins, you already know that they're not the same person. They have unique personalities and slight differences that make them grow into different people over time. Likewise, a clone of a human being would share DNA but have very different experiences that could turn the clone into a very different person over time!

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The word itself probably conjures images from a science fiction movie, in which an evil genius creates clones of himself. With an army of genetically-identical twins at his command, the mastermind then proceeds to take over the world! But is merely the stuff of movies? Or is the science behind it real?

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could be used to test cures
could even be used to study cancer
no genetic disorder
could be used for organs and blood
could be used to bring back a dead child
could allow couple who cant have children themselves have a child that looks similar to them

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it is illegal
would most likely fail and cause unnecessary risks
the person being cloned could get hurt
they wouldn't be the same person as the one cloned
could be hard on the clone
most of the public is against it
it affects individuality and distinctiveness
people could be cloning for wrong reasons
difficult to produce healthy clones in general

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I do not agree with human cloning. Based on the cons and pros I think the cons are stronger and have more importance