The facts are just now emerging, so what I say today might have to be revised in the light of the better understanding of the facts that will come with time. We also need to see what laws we have in place now that are relevant to human cloning, as well as what current laws might be extended to cover it. It may well be that our laws governing research with human subjects could provide the protections that the American people believe are necessary. In any event, we have to cope with a new possibility the conception and birth of genetic replicas of already existing persons. We are all familiar with clones of a sort.
Identical twins occur when one embryo divides into two genetically identical ones.
If we applied cloning technology to ourselves we would be substituting controlled, intentional and perhaps decades-delayed cloning for the occasional accident of nature. But cloning strikes us as very different from the birth of identical twins. It is important to understand what this new cloning technology cannot do. Then would come infancy, childhood and the throes of adolescence. So, no instant copies.