Human Cloning Debate

The discovery also threatens to reopen the debate over human cloning, since one of the simpler ways to grow transplantable replacement tissues from the new cells would call for a patient to be partially cloned.

In fact, researchers in Australia recently suggested that patients might someday want to clone themselves to take advantage of stem cell technology. The idea is not to make a full adult replica of oneself, but to clone a genetically identical embryo from which stem cells could be removed. Tissues made from those cells would be an exact immunological match and so would not be rejected.