Locals react to human-cloning possibility

When British scientists announced the cloning of a seven-year-old sheep last week, many ethical and scientific issues arose from the study. But even more important than the issues that arose may be the amount of people that took notice of this scientific breakthrough.

"I think this had kind of made a big splash," said Esther Siegfried, assistant professor of biology, biochemistry and molecular biology. "This kind of captured people's imagination. These are things that hit home."

Capturing imagination is one thing, but some suggest scientists may take it a step further.

"It's been something that people have kind of made movies about in the past," said Christopher Minson (graduate-exercise physiology). "From a scientific standpoint, it's not that far-fetched."

People outside of the scientific community may have outlandish thoughts as to where the cloning issue may go, Siegfried said.

"I think some people may be thinking 'Oh my God, there are people out there cloning 30,000 nasty dictators'," she said.

But developments similar to this have occurred in the past, Siegfried said.

"The issues have been here," she said. "For instance, there have been experiments done in other species that were similar to this. They didn't work as well, but that never made it to the cover of the New York Times."

The same attitudes could be seen in students. Some said they were worried about the possible applications of the cloning technology.

"As far as cloning people goes, there are a lot of risks that haven't been explored," Matt Doty (junior-physics) said.

- Esther Siegfried,
assistant professor of biology, biochemistry and molecular biology

"(Scientists) could take the traits of a variety of individuals and create someone or something that is uncontrollable or unstoppable," Eddie Gollhofer (junior-business) said.

Anne Marie Artioli (senior-biology) saw danger not in the technology, but in the possibility of a scientific community tightly regulated by the government.

"Eventually, the government's going to have to step in," she said. "That's almost more scary . . . the government telling science what it can and can't do."

But government intervention is not necessarily a bad thing, Siegfried said.

"The government is already involved in legislating what you can and cannot do in terms of research, and that's appropriate," she said.

The possibility of human clones does not faze identical twin Rhiannon Weaver (sophomore-computer science).

"My sister and I have the same genetic material, but we're different people," she said. "It's the same thing with clones."

The entire issue still has many developmental steps ahead, Siegfried said.

"I don't think people should panic," she said. "This experiment didn't happen overnight. Time will tell."