Typically, it suggests images of quasi-human "clones" as second-class citizens or beings created for forcible slavery or scientific exploitation in the manner sometimes depicted by science fiction movies and literature. In truth, clones already live among us, because every identical twin is actually a clone of its twin (Sagan 1997).

In reality, cloning simply refers to the process of generating a viable fetus from one set of genes instead of two sets contributed by two parents. At the simplest level, this would allow infertile couples and single women to have children whose genes are exclusively theirs instead of having to combine their genes with those of complete strangers to become pregnant. The first successfully cloned mammal was a sheep named

Dolly" created in 1997, but responsible scientists and medical ethicists do not recommend human cloning until the many difficulties associated with it can be solved

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Scientific, medical, and legal ethics must be defined by science and objective ethical principles rather than by subjective religious beliefs. Nowhere is this distinction more important than in considering such beneficial concepts as human stem cell research and cloning technology that hold the very real potential of curing debilitating disease and traumatic injury for so many.