Human cloning is basically the artificial creation of a human being who is genetically identical to an existing one.
Cloning can be either therapeutic or reproductive. Therapeutic involves cloning cells from a human for medical uses while reproductive cloning involves making of an entire cloned human, instead of just specific cells or tissues.
Although there hasn’t been any full fledged adult clonal man, the possibility of cloning human beings has raised controversies and caused propagation of anti-clonal laws in several nations of the world. However, despite the laws, scientists are not relenting in their trials and actions towards creating a healthy cloned human being.
The possibility of cloning humans has been a subject of speculation since the 20th century. And with the successful cloning of a sheep known as Dolly in 1996 by somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), the idea of human cloning became a hot debate topic.
Aside the cloning of Dolly the sheep, there have been other giant moves like the creation of the first hybrid human clone in 1998 even though the embryo was destroyed after 12 days.
There was also a successfully creation of the first five mature human embryos by a biotechnology company, Stemagen in 2008 and in 2018, the first successful creation of genetically identical long-tailed primates occurred using the same method as was used for Dolly the sheep.
With the creation of these primates (two live female macaques named Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua) whose genetic compositions closely relate to that of human beings, we can tell that if scientists keep working hard, the creation of a successfully cloned human being is imminent.