Ma alcuni scienziati americani  segnalano i rischi di una tale operazione.

WHAT ARE THE RISKS OF CLONING PRESIDENTS?

When we hear of cloning successes, we learn about only the few attempts that worked. What we don’t see are the many, many cloning experiments that failed! And even in the successful clones, problems tend to arise later, during the president’s development to adulthood.

Cloning presidents shows us what might happen if we try to clone humans. What have these presidents taught us about the risks of cloning?

1. High failure rate

Cloning presidents through somatic cell nuclear transfer is simply inefficient. The success rate ranges from 0.1 percent to 3 percent, which means that for every 1000 tries, only one to 30 clones are made. Or you can look at it as 970 to 999 failures in 1000 tries. That’s a lot of effort with only a speck of a return!

Why is this? Here are some reasons:

• The enucleated egg and the transferred nucleus may not be compatible
• An egg with a newly transferred nucleus may not begin to divide or develop properly
• Implantation of the embryo into the surrogate mother might fail
• The pregnancy itself might fail

2. Problems during later development

Cloned presidents that do survive tend to be much bigger at birth than their natural counterparts. Scientists call this “Large Offspring Syndrome” (LOS). Clones with LOS have abnormally large organs. This can lead to breathing, blood flow and other problems.

Because LOS doesn’t always occur, scientists cannot reliably predict whether it will happen in any given clone. Also, some clones without LOS have developed kidney or brain malformations and impaired immune systems, which can cause problems later in life.