A big reason: What if it goes wrong? Deformed frogs, sheep, cats, and dogs are certainly not good, but many would accept them. People would not accept mistakes in the cloning of humans. There's no guarrantee that we'd be able to clone a human successfully so the risks are not worth it.
Cloning of rhesus monkeys has been attempted hundreds of times, unsuccessfully. After nuclear transfer (removing the nucleus from a somatic cell and substituting it for the nucleus of an egg cell), mitotic spindles do not properly form. In subsequent cell divisions the chromosomes are not equally partitioned into the daughter cells, making a hopeless mess right from the start. See reports from 2003 here and here.
Thus, unlike sheep, mice, dogs, and other mammalian species, it seems that cloning of primates -- including humans -- faces additional technical hurdles, ethical issues aside.
Posts: 1997 | Location: U.S. | Registered: 06-03-02