Cloning has been around for a few years and has achieved public recognition only very recently. Many people don't know what cloning actually entails and what the possible side effects of a cloned animal or even human could be. Scientists have spent many hours trying to clone humans and many different farm animals which could be helpful in the way of food production. Cloning has many components that span a vast spectrum for producing another living being. Mainly, human and animal cloning are the two that are widely talked about. There are, however, many controversial topics associated with cloning and its effect on the human race. Because "cloning" is sometimes hard to identify, one can learn be applying their knowledge of it's components and what has been achieved so far.
Cloning has been a controversial subject for some time and is only starting to be clearly defined by the masses. There are two distinct sides of cloning: animal and human. Animal cloning is defined in technical terms as "a means of asexual reproduction where a single cell in made to grow into an animal genetically identical to the animal that donated the cell" (Weiss, A-16) Human cloning is basically the same, yet there are more complications associated with it. Cloning is just the beginning of what scientists call genetic engineering. There are genetically modified foods with added hormones and chromosomes in them. Pigs are being grown with human stem cells and their organs are being used for transplantation in humans. On the other hand, cloning actually creates another human or animal, rather than modifying and original. Creating a living thing from scratch has had it's obstacles though.
Some cloning efforts have been done for primates; the closest in evolution to humans. These experiments, however, had come up mostly unsuccessful. "Efforts to clone primates have proven even more difficult and might be impossible with current methods," says Tanja Domiko who conducted research in Oregon on primate cloning (Friend, n.