In an amazing step forward in genetic research, Dolly, the first cloned sheep who was born in Edinburgh on 5 July 1996, was honoured at her birthplace on 25 February this year with a special blue plaque from the Society of Biology. Dolly was unveiled to the world in 1997 and revolutionised scientific understanding of the mechanism of development at the Roslin Institute, University of Edinburg.

The process of creating carbon copies of domestic animals is intricate and dangerous, indeed. Scientists working on genetic engineering in South Korea produced a cloned dog created from the skin cells of a healthy Afghan hound decades ago.

In cloning a human, scientists would employ the same comprehensive technique as used for animals. Though the research is ambitious, the technique raises many ethical and philosophical questions. There is also a dispute among scientists regarding the efficacy of the research. Some have warned that the cloning process may produce genetically abnormal or defective offspring, while others have argued that the research would lead the culture of science in a wrong direction.

Cloning is a departure from the process of fertilisation that occurs from the union of sperm and an ovum, usually inside the mother&’s womb. Geneticists, on the other hand, produce offspring from an individual body or tissue cells without fertilisation. This then is cloning, or asexual reproduction.

A cloned offspring has one parent. A baby can be produced solely with the help of the mother&’s body (tissue) cell and there is virtually no need for a male counterpart. The cell taken from a female body would develop a baby with the mirror image of a single parent and hundreds of similar offspring could be produced. It is well known that the genetic code directs the creation of all the proteins in the body. However, when a change in the genetic code takes place, it is called mutation and can lead to genetic disorder.

Scientists are able to change the genetic code in order to produce a desired outcome. Testing the unborn can be done and this helps a pregnant mother to ascertain whether any genetic disorder persists in her unborn child so that the parents could consider an abortion. Abortion, however, is a controversial matter. Completely curing a genetic disorder is difficult, which explains why scientists have introduced a new correct genetic material into the cell.

An African frog was cloned about three decades ago by Professor JB Gordon of Oxford University. He extracted an unfertilised frog ovum, destroyed its nucleus with ultraviolet light and then collected a body cell from the frog, extracted its nucleus with the help of a microscope and implanted this nucleus in the ovum&’s cell. The cell division started immediately and finally a mature frog developed.

The most striking feature of a cloned offspring is that it is always a replica of the parent of the body cell donor and will not inherit any genetic characteristics from the ovum cell. It is surprising that a woman can donate both ovum cell and body cell for the purpose of cloning. In which case the baby will be identical to the female parent. A male counterpart would not be required for the reproduction process. However, the male would be able to donate his body cell for cloning, in which case the baby would be his identical.

Though cloning is used as common parlance today, it has many technical problems. During the development of an embryo, its cells specialise for definite functions and gradually “turn off”. Turning these specialised cells back “on” with all their original genetic materials for the development of an individual is a new phenomenon.

The geneticists are confident about producing a clone human baby any time. They believe that about 70 million infertile men across the world would be able to have their children by this process. According to many geneticists, it is also a religious culture, an article of faith aimed at perpetuating life and definitely not against the creation of the creator.

However the anti-cloning lobby has argued that the entire process has not yet been mastered. Even experiments with animals so far have produced abnormal babies. About 18 per cent of the cloned mice died, as did 38 per cent goats before maturity. The same result may bring disaster during human cloning.

The idea of breeding humans selectively involves much more than technical problems and there&’s no avoiding the ethical or philosophical questions. Who will decide what human traits are to be preserved or bred? If the natural genetic variability is bred out of the human population, what would be its consequences? What type of society will geneticists bring? Who will be empowered to decide what is a good or a bad genetic make-up? What would be the relationship of a clone with society?

Despite the hue and cry on human cloning, it transpires that geneticists are determined to go ahead. It is true that there is danger of manipulating human genetic code. But it is hoped that cloning a human baby by genetic engineering would be a work of art. An artist paints a picture with brush, colour and paper. The geneticists’ ingredients are different.

The writer, a former reader in chemistry, Presidency College, Kolkata, was associated with the University Grants Commission