Can nuclear transfer be used to clone humans?
Reproductive cloning is the process by which nuclear transfer products are implanted in a uterus to create a pregnancy, rather than being used in laboratory dishes to generate embryonic stem cells as in therapeutic cloning. But while reproductive cloning has been achieved with a variety of animal species (such as “Dolly” the sheep), this process is highly inefficient because nuclear transfer products rarely develop normally enough to establish a viable pregnancy when they are transferred into a uterus. Only around 1% of attempts at reproductive cloning in animals give rise to viable offspring. As a result, scientists believe that reproductive cloning would be unsafe to attempt in humans, in addition to being ethically questionable. As a result, there is broad agreement among scientists and physicians that while therapeutic cloning is important, that reproductive cloning should be banned. This can be achieved by making it illegal to transfer nuclear transfer products into a woman’s uter
