Rosemary Pitman, age 12, of Indianapolis, Ind., for her question:
WHAT IS CLONING?
If you pick a twig of ivy from your garden and put it into a glass of water, and then place the glass on a table near a window, before too many days pass you will notice small roots developing on the stem in the water. And after a few weeks new leaves will start to grow at the top of the twig. In the purest meaning of the word, you would be cloning.
A clone is a group of genetically identical cells descended from a single common ancestor. The word comes from the Greek word meaning twig or branch.
When you put a twig of ivy in a glass and it produces new branches, leaves and roots, reproduction has been achieved without pollination. The twig, on its own, has formed a completely new plant.
Originally the term cloning was used to describe the development of individual organisms which descended by asexual reproduction from a single sexually produced individual. Aphids reproduce parthenogenetically and some plants propogate by vegetative means.
The term parthenogenetically comes from another Greek word: parthenos meaning maiden or virgin and genesis meaning birth.
The big question today asks if human cloning is possible. We can clone a new apple tree by grafting from one tree and we can clone tapeworms as new creatures come from the segmentation of one. Will a man someday be able to create multiple replicas of himself?
Much is still to be explored in the field of human cloning. Would experiments in human genetics be competing with God? Does man have any right to conduct a search for the origin of life?
The implications are challenging. Could a scientist step into his own clone, and thereby continue a new life of research? Could a great entertainer directly pass on his talent to a copy of himself? Could a mad tyrant clone a virtual army of mad tyrants?
The desire for immortality is part of all of us and the idea is a central tenet of many of our religious beliefs. But by what direction do we try for this immortality?
The idea of human cloning seems in many ways to threaten our already shaky understandings of our own identities and our uniquenesses. We are very complex, and we come up with some very complex ideas.
It wasn't too long ago when someone asked if man would ever be able to fly like the birds. Soon man was soaring higher than the eagles fly. Then someone asked if man would ever be able to break the bonds of gravity and fly into outer space and now there are footprints in the dust on the moon.
What are the new frontiers? We will have to wait and see.