The science fiction scenarios for cloning include the ability to produce spare body parts or to raise supermen or superbrains. One can imagine how 100 Albert Einsteins or Elvis Prestleys might change the world. And it is spurious to suggest that a clone of Albert Einstein would be as brilliant. Culture and upbringing have as much to do as genetics with what we become, she says. We don't want to predetermine people because he or she might have a certain set of genes, there's something wrong about saying they will be that type of person.
People are more complicated than that.
Nicholas can see no scenario for cloning at present, but she predicts that within a decade medical ethicists will be confronting such proposals. What cloning presents us with is a new situation of how we understand ourselves. It goes to how we control how we reproduce and what level of control we should seek over future generations. Ingrid Winship, a senior lecturer in clinical genetics at the Auckland University medical school, sees good reasons medically and ethically to prevent widespread cloning of animals or humans. Alternatively there may be persons who wish to dispense with the requirement for the opposite gender and depend on cloning for perpetuating the species.