To Be or not to Be?

The legal and moral debate over cloning is likely to be long and complicated. Until 1997,when Dr. Ian Wilmut, an embryologist from Edinburgh, Scotland, announced that he had successfully cloned an adult sheep, most scientists thought the cloning of mammalian, not to mention human, embryos would not occur for many years (the term cloning refers to a technique where the nucleus of an egg is replaced by a cell nucleus from a living adult; the resulting embryo is a genetic carbon copy of the adult.).

But nowadays with the massive cloning of a human embryo looming on the horizon,lawyers, politicians, and policymakers are grappling with the complexities of the issue. Would human clones be patentable by the cloner, or would the clones retain intellectual property rights over their genetic material? Since they would be a product of replication rather than procreation, would they be considered humans, covered by all existing laws? And what about human-animal hybrids? Could someone patent and enslave an entire race of human-animal hybrids? Is it possible a weapons contractor could count on patent protection to market an army of disposable human clones so long as the clones were genetically altered in some, perhaps tiny, way?

Despite the opposition of religious groups who say embryos are humans who are killed in the process of extracting stem cells, Parliament in the UK legalized therapeutic cloning at the beginning of the 21^st century, while outlawing the placement of a cloned embryo into a woman's uterus. The view seems to have prevailed in Britain that it is more ethical to use scientific knowledge to relieve existing human disease than it is to block this research. Nevertheless, a British group, the Pro-Life Alliance, attacked the new bill in a 2001 lawsuit, arguing that a cloned egg didn't qualify as an embryo. Their suit won in trial court, with the ironic result that human reproductive cloning became legal in the UK. In any case, the trial court's decision was reversed on appeal, and reproductive cloning is again illegal.

There is no international consensus on the subject. Unlike the UK, for example, Germany bans research that "does not benefit the embryo itself." Meanwhile, in the US, a Bush administration policy bans the use of federal funds for research involving cloning, but until a law passes like the one Bush has been lobbying for, therapeutic cloning is permitted in privately funded research.

3. Sum up the text above in about 100 words pointing out the following:

1)The legal issues connected with cloning.

2)Laws on cloning in the UK.

3)Lack of international consensus.

4. Read the text, explain and translate the underlined words.

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