What if you were able to pick your child? Imagine just looking through a beauty magazine and pointing a finger, saying, "That's the one", and 9 months later the person that you have picked is born. This concept is not that far out of reach. In the near future a woman can give birth to any person in the world, whether they be alive or even dead. Even Albert Einstein can be born again. How you ask? Human cloning has been studied a great deal over the past few years, and one day may be perfected. What an amazing scientific breakthrough this would be. But, is it as wonderful as it sounds? Some say yes, but many also say no.
             Cloning is a difficult process. Experiments on cloning started as early as the 1950's. These early attempts at cloning targeted frogs, salamanders, and other amphibians. If these organisms reproduced asexually it would have been simple to clone because there is only one parent cell. However, when dealing with larger organisms, such as mammals, a more complicated procedure will be needed. This is because two sex cells are needed to reproduce. The nucleus of the egg must be destroyed and removed. The nucleus of a body cell from the same species is then removed and injected into the egg where the nucleus had been. If allowed to develop and grow, this will produce a clone of the donor animal.
             About five years ago a sheep named Dolly was born. She was part of an experiment by embryologist Ian Wilmut of the Roslin Institute in Scotland. This animal was no ordinary sheep. She looked exactly like her sister. Furthermore, she had the same DNA structure and genes as her sister. In reality she and her sister were genetically the same creature. Scientists fused mammary cells of a sheep with an egg cell using electricity. The cell that was left over was then able to develop into an embryo. After about 300 attempts, Dolly had been genetically created and was an exact clone of an alr...