Book of the Week (September 17, 2007)

On the New Book Shelf
Call Number: QH 442.2 .K637 2006

A Clone of Your Own?
By Arlene Judith Klotzko

Publisher's Book Description: Someday soon (if it has not happened already in secret), the first cloned human being will be born and mankind will embark on a scientific and moral journey whose destination cannot be foretold. In A Clone of Your Own?, Arlene Judith Klotzko describes the new world of possibilities that can be glimpsed over the horizon. In a lucid and engaging narrative, she explains that the technology to create clones of living beings already exists. inaugurated in 1996 by Dolly, the sheep, the first mammal clone formed from a single adult cell, Dolly was the culmination of a long scientific quest to understand the puzzle of our development from one cell into a complex organism--the outcome of a "fantastic experiment" envisioned six decades before her birth.

The human fascination with cloning goes beyond science and its extraordinary medical implications. In riveting prose full of allusions to art, music, and theatre, Klotzko explains why the prospect of human cloning triggers our deepest hopes and our darkest fears and forces us to ponder what it would mean to have a "clone of our own."

Arlene Judith Klotzko, a bioethicist and lawyer, is Writer in Residence at the Science Museum, London. She is also a Visiting Scholar in Bioethics at the Windeyer Institute, University College, London. She provides commentary on science, ethics and policy for television and radio in the U.S., UK and worldwide through Sky News, BBC World Television News, Bloomberg Television, Voice of America and the BBC World Service.