"The fuss about cloning is rather silly, I can't see any essential distinction between cloning and producing brothers and sisters in the time-honored way." Stephen Hawking

The news of Dolly hit the headlines with a sickening thud-- the sound of a sheep that had been launched at full speed at the world's pundits. And the pundits did not disappoint. Their responses were dismissive, scared, funny, outrageous, wise and stupid by turns. The important thing, it seemed, was to think of something to say, and say it first. Journalists, hungry for copy, swallowed their quotes and spread them on the page, in between invoking Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World' and Ira Levin's 'The Boys from Brazil'-- apparently the only literary references to cloning anyone could remember....President Clinton, meanwhile, had only to say that there were 'serious ethical questions' to generate gravitas. One of the advantages of being president is that no one has the termerity to ask you too closely what the questions are." The Economist

This has enormous potential for good, There should be no limits on human knowledge, none whatever. To those like President Clinton who say we can't play God, I say OK, fine, you can take your side alongside Pope Paul V who in 1616 tried to stop Galileo, they accused Galileo of trying to play God too. [...] I don't think cloning is demeaning to human nature, to attempt to limit human knowledge is demeaning. It's not legitimate to try to stop cloning. What nonsense, what utter, utter nonsense to think we can hold up our hand and just say "stop". Cloning will continue, the human mind will continue to inquire into it. Human cloning will take place and it will take place in my lifetime, and I don't fear it at all. I want to be on the side of the Galileos and those who say the human mind has no limits, rather than trying to stop something that's going to happen anyway.
US Senator Tom Harkin, (D) IA

Dolly is out of the bottle and she isn't going to go back in. New Scientist

It's so funny: while most humans are against cloning their physical bodies, they find nothing wrong - and even encourage - cloning of their ideas, value system, mindsets, etc. Alexander Chislenko

I'm uncomfortable with sanctimonious and ill-thought-out presidential decrees where the president has determined we have crossed a boundary beyond which humanity dare not go... I disagree there is such a boundary.

Humanity should be in control of its own destiny. James Hughes

Cloning is not photocopying. Peter Cochrane

I think we must beware of a reflex and unthinking antipathy to everything "unnatural". Certainly cloning is unnatural. We haven't bred without sex for perhaps a thousand million years. But unnatural isn't a necessary synonym for bad. It's unnatural to read books, or travel faster than we can run, or scuba-dive, or fly. It's unnatural to wear clothes, but we do. Indeed, the people most likely to be scandalised at the prospect of human cloning are the very people most outraged by lack of human clothing.

Cloning may be good and it may be bad. Probably it's a bit of both. The question must not be greeted with reflex hysteria but decided quietly, soberly and on its merits. We need less emotion and more thought. Richard Dawkins

We thought this wasn't possible and that we didn't have to worry about it for a while. Then it happened. Diane Barthels, University of Minnesota centre for biomedical ethics

Om folk tror att galna vetenskapsmän, i strid mot opinioner och lagar, står redo att ta steget från kloning av får till kloning av människor, är det inte tekniken de fruktar ­ utan människan. Nils Uddenberg

Dr Wilmut revealed that the world's first cloned animal was named after singer Dolly Parton, because the cell used to create her came from the "impressive mammaries" of another sheep. The Guardian

Cloning and the reprogramming of DNA is the first serious step in becoming one with God.' Dr Richard G. Seed

Legalisera kloning