Scientific American May 1997 [antikvár]

From the Editors The Misunderstood Clone Oh, give me a clone Of my own flesh and bone With its Y chromosome changed to X And when it is grown Then my own little clone Will be of the opposite sex. he late, great Isaac Asimov co-authored that doggerel with Randall Garrett decades ago, but it fits today with the general giddiness over successful mammalian cloning. Jokes about cloned sheep and virgin wool abound. Associate editor Tim Beardsley assesses some of the more sobering sides of cloning in his news story beginning on page 10. In the interest of retaining perspective, it is worth pausing to review everything that cloning isn't. First and foremost, it is not a process for making exact copies of grown people. My clones and I would be no more alike and probably less than any identical twins. To strip away cloning's mystique, remember that it was originally a horticultural term ("clone" derives from the Greek word for "twig"). Any gardener who has planted a clipping and seen it take root has cloning credentials. No one expects a cloned rosebush to be a carbon copy of its parent down to the arrangement of the thorns, so it would be equally wrong to expect human clones to match up in the infinite variety of personal characteristics. Second, cloning is not yet a well-es-tablished technology, fully ready for use on human cells. But because the techniques needed to accomplish cloning are frighteningly simple as far as biomedical miracles go, it seems all but certain that some clinic or laboratory will quietly start trying at any moment. Yet rushing prematurely to human experiments could be tragic. Finally, even when cloning of humans is safe, it isn't necessarily going to be popular. Cloning won't replace the more time-honored method of reproduction: it's not as much fun, and it's a lot more expensive. Cloning commercially valuable animals makes perfect economic sense—it is a potentially surer thing than breeding. Humans, though, have a less clearly defined market value as biological entities, which provides less financial incentive for copying them. Granted, you can't put a price on vanity, so the idea will appeal to those with excesses of cash and ego. Still, most of us will probably eat a cloned mammal before we shake hands with one. SHEEPISH GRIN obscures confusion over cloning. JOHN RENNIE, Editor in Chief editors@>;ciam.com