Q.What are the merits of cloning ?

Cloning produces genetically identical individuals, occurring naturally through asexual reproduction or artificially via nuclear-transfer techniques in the lab. Dolly the sheep (1997, Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell) was the first mammal cloned, and the first cloned from a differentiated adult somatic cell rather than by fertilisation, exploiting totipotency. The procedure fused a starved, dormant udder cell from a donor ewe with an enucleated egg from a second ewe, then implanted the resulting embryo into a third, surrogate ewe; of 277 attempted fusions only 29 embryos were viable enough to implant, and just one, Dolly, was born — reflecting how inefficient the technique is (over 90% of cloning attempts overall fail). Cloning can aid clinical trials, drug/protein production, stem cell research and conservation of endangered species, but carries real downsides: it is slow and expensive, can cause animal suffering, produces surrogates and offspring with higher rates of adverse hea …