Linkmeister

Um, I'll take two?

Admittedly, this article emanates from the Genome News Network, so the author is trying to make a point, but it's still one of the better discussions I've seen about stem-cell research, cloning, and politics.

One of the stumbling blocks is a broad, deep lack of understanding of what the word "cloning" means. The word is widely used in our society and has been given a number of meanings, most of them wrong.

To scientists, cloning means making a copy of something—-anything, a stretch of DNA, a virus, a cell. To most laypeople, including many members of Congress, cloning means creating a carbon-copy organism, like Dolly the sheep or the army of clones in a recent "Star Wars" movie. It means making an exact copy of a living adult and the imagination often focuses on evil ones at that.