Are clone embryos like IVF and normal pregnancies?
Not so far. The scientists at the Roslin Institute, who pioneered this work, have repeatedly found that the clone foetuses grow much larger than normal ones, and there is a much higher chance of the pregnancy failing, of stillbirth, or of forced Caesarean sections. Dolly was the one successful pregnancy of more than 277 embryos. So if I’m cloned, the result will have exactly the same DNA as me? Only if you’re a woman and use one of your own eggs. A key bit of DNA actually resides outside the nucleus, and isn’t removed in the “DNA transplant”. This is the mitochondrial DNA referred to by Ruth Deech (usually called the mtDNA), which is passed down through the maternal line – everyone inherits their mother’s mtDNA. So men can’t be cloned exactly, unless they get an egg from an immediate female relative. Cloning Risks [Excerpted from this article at the Roslin Institute.] The risk is not simply a lack of a pregnancy. In the three cloning experiments that have been carried out at the Roslin
