But rather than winning a Nobel Prize these people may have to face almost universal condemnation. There's a fairly broad consensus worldwide that this is undesireable. It's too risky and underpinning the scientific risk there are tremendous moral and ethical problems. I'm not convinced that people understand how unsafe the science is. Professor Robert Winston, the test tube baby pioneer, said that cloning technology was so new that it would be very unliley to produce a healthy baby.
Cloning involves producing a genetic twin from a single cell, for example a skin cell.
Cattle, mice and pigs have all been cloned since the birth of Dolly the sheep in Scotland in 1996. Dolly was the first mammal ever cloned from an adult. The biggest obstacle to creating a human clone is obtaining a supply of eggs. Once harvested, the eggs are then denucleated - their DNA is removed using a fine syringe. DNA extracted from cells from the individual to be cloned is then injected into the egg.