Send in the Clones: Busting Common Cloning Myths

Like most misperceptions, cloning myths are based on misunderstandings of a complex issue. To many people, the whole concept of cloning seems bizarre and a little too much like playing God, so it's easy to lose track of what's rumor and what's real.

Cloning is basically the creation of a genetic duplicate of another living thing. It's relatively easy with microbes and plants, but it gets amazingly complicated with higher organisms -- and that's where a lot of the confusion starts. In this article, we'll try to straighten out a few of the most common myths.

Myth 1: Cloning is a brand new, untested technology.

This cloning myth probably derives more from new terminology than it does from the associated technology. We've been cloning vegetables and fruits successfully for decades, except that we didn't called it that. The fact is, most fruits we commonly eat -- especially banana, apples, and pears -- are cloned.

Even the cloning of animals isn't all that new. Scientists cloned frogs as early as the 1950s. Embryonic cells have been used for cloning since the early 1990s. Dolly the Sheep, the first animal cloned from an adult cell, was born in 1996. It's human cloning that's untested -- because it's been legally banned in most places.

Myth 2: Cloning is unnatural.

This cloning myth is easy to dismiss. Actually, a lot of plants and lower animals reproduce naturally by cloning themselves, and when you get right down to it, so do your individual body cells. Since this doesn't occur in a laboratory setting or with human assistance, it's got to be considered natural.

In fact, it can be argued that nothing humans do, as a part of nature, is unnatural. But if you don't buy that, consider this: if cloning is unnatural, so are open-heart surgery, Cesarean section births, automobiles, clothing, airplanes, and cooking. But that doesn't stop us from embracing these technologies, does it?

Myth 3: Clones are identical to the original.

Of course they aren't. Identical chemical makeup doesn't mean identical lives. Most cloning myths notwithstanding, all clones are born as babies, just like any other creature; so, at a purely physical level, their donor is significantly older, and has had different life experiences. They're only identical genetically.

Even so, those genes may be expressed differently. Identical twins, the closest natural equivalent to clones, can look slightly different -- sometimes quite different, depending on environmental factors. Clones are far from being carbon copies of one another.

Myth 4: Cloned plants and animals aren't safe to eat.

Oh yeah? Check out Cloning Myths #1 and #2, and it's easy to see that this cloning myth isn't true. Every plant made from a cutting is a clone, and we've survived eating them for thousands of years. Grafted fruit has been common for decades, and cloned livestock have been available for ten years or more.

People are concerned about the safety of so-called "Frankenfoods" because they're frightened that something could go wrong with them, and because they seem new. But a clone is just a copy of an existing creature. At the genetic level, nothing has been added or subtracted.

That said, milk and meat from cloned animals is currently being withheld from the market while the FDA studies the issue. But the moratorium is voluntary: the FDA has admitted since 2006 that the public worry about the safety of cloned foods was just one more cloning myth.