• Question: what would happen of a clone reproduced with a human? would the reasult be a whole new race, or, a inavoidable danger?

    Asked by feather to Ian on 14 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Ian van der Linde

      Ian van der Linde answered on 14 Jun 2011:


      If you are thinking of a biolgical clone – i.e., an exact duplicate of a person created from their own genetic material, then they are really no different from any other human, so any children they had would be just as human too!

      Cloning does not imply genetically engineering changes – perhaps making genetic modifications to DNA during cloning to make “improvements” could at some point lead to a new species, but there are lots of ethical reasons why people don’t do this at the moment. However, it is theoretically possible, although not often done, for people who are having fertility treatment to choose certain characteristics of their baby, like sex, eye/hair colour and so on, so I suppose it’s just a step further along to choose on the basis of things other than appearance and gender.

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