Snuppy Time

November 16, 2005

Snuppy, the world’s first cloned dog, has been chosen Time’s Most Amazing Invention of 2005 (you can read the full story after watching a short advertisement).

Although many scientists are excited by Hwang’s work, some policymakers and researchers are understandably uncomfortable with it. “Cloning forces us to think about, Are we just a mass of cells and biological processes?” says Dr. Robert Klitzman, a co-director of Columbia University’s Center for Bioethics. “Stem cells touch on fundamental questions of who we are, where we come from and where we are going.”

As a scientist, Hwang can’t afford to wait to answer those deep questions.

Shouldn’t science wait for answers to such fundamental questions? Has this kind of rush-ahead thinking ever worked out well in history?