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A human embryo was first cloned in 1998, according to the Human Cloning Foundation, though development was halted after 12 days.
In November of this year, Dr. Severino Antinori claims a woman will bear a child "conceived" by cloning in January 2003, though no proof has been forthcoming from earlier, similar announcements by him.

However, it seems that Stanford will indeed be focusing more on stem cell cloning and research, rather than embryos entire. That doesn't mean other universities or organizations won't use this announcement as a stepping stone to researching embryonic cloning (for the purpose of "growing" cloned humans), though.

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This + This = Immortality. All you'd have to worry about from there would be disease/walking in front of a MAC truck.

Human cloning? Far from being the "Attack of the Clones", nothing is more misunderstood than medicinal human cloning. Please, don't confuse the goals of The Human Cloning Foundation, the federation of misanthropes bent on finding a country willing to host their young Frankenstein adventures, with Medicinal Human Cloning.

The idea behind Medicinal Human Cloning (MHC) is to clone human cells at the cellular level, before cell differentiation. Cell differentiation occurs 2 weeks into the life of an embryo, when all the cells in the embryo stop being homogenous and, all at once, establish their own identities. Some become hand cells, some feet cells, some brain cells, some blood cells. This "magic" event is the point at which human life begins. MHC is the process of cloning human cells before this event.

The point of being able to harvest unlimited quantities of undifferentiated human cells is that these cells can become any cell in the body; they are "undecided", yet genetically matched to the recipient. The applications here are as numerous as you can imagine: tissue replacement, skin replacement for burn victims, manufactured organs custom-matched to the recipient. This is the promise we are debating; the lives of millions who could be saved by this procedure, from burn victims to heart attack victims.

This advance promises to revolutionize medicine. Not just technically, but from a societal perspective as well. If we understand anything about MHC, it is that it will be prohibitively expensive to apply to an entire population. An order of magnitude costlier than even heart transplantation, we are dealing with sums of millions of dollars per regenerated organ. And unlike transplantation, this technique will be able to prolong the life of anyone, indefinitely. As a society, we will soon be in the position of deciding the lifespan(s) of each of our citizens. Not because we control death; not euthenasia, but because we control life.

We've already seen this paradigm emerge with the "list" for heart transplants. The pathetic attempt at a "meritocracy" for deciding who receives a new heart has been a total failure, as evidenced by the case of David Crosby. The system is weighted in favor of the rich, against the poor. Will this paradigm dominate the field of Medicinal Human Cloning? Will only the rich live forever? Will money become the force of life? Not if we can help it. We will need to act decisively as events are set in motion.

We must establish a true meritocracy for the Immortality Revolution ushered in by advances in Medicinal Human Cloning. Like the Slashdot Moderation system, we could create a system of random "Moderators", if you will, who are picked secretly and randomly and given the ability to tag their fellow citizens as deserving or undeserving of the scarce asset of Organ Regeneration, financed by the state. You could rate your neighbor (-1 Stupid) for abusing his spouse, or your coworker (+1 Insightful) for fixing your printer connection. Those with the highest scores would receive the greatest medical benefit: Immortality.

Imagine a world where we never lost an Einstein, never killed a Bohr. Where great leaders like George Bush could advise us forever; where people like Noam Chomsky were but a temporary nuisance. This is the promise of cloning: not reproducing the husks of people but giving the gift of life to the greatest among us.

We must act swiftly when the time comes.

Really? You must not have looked very hard... There are plenty of reasons why someone would want to clone a human. Here's an essay on why an infertile woman with no viable eggs wants human cloning as explained by her husband . I'd also like to question your contention that making partsof humans is "unethical". We've been doing that for several years now... Personally, I agree with the esteemed scientist, Stephen Hawking when he says, "The fuss about cloning is rather silly, I can't see any essential distinction between cloning and producing brothers and sisters in the time-honored way."

Didn't think so. ;)

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The people that would do it obviously dont care about what others think, whether its ethically right or legal etc. They would do it so they could be the first if for no other reason

You are a self-righteous little shit, aren't you? You label everyone in favor of human cloning as unethical, asocial, criminals just because you disagree with them. Some people feel that it is ethical. In fact, some of those that feel that human cloning is ethical are bioethicists. And they feel strongly that it should be legal. I suggest that you go to http://www.humancloning.org/ and read a little before shooting off your mouth.

While the general idea of human cloning intrigues me, I think that there need to be limits to its use. For instance, I'd start with a provision that only brain tissue could be used for cloning. That way, I could rest comfortably knowing that there will never be a clone of you unleashed on society.

Here's some good reading material on cloning I thought I should share from bookmarks. I know I should've posted them before but caffiene deficiency will do that.

D.N.Army: the Implications of Human Cloning on Future Military Forces
Bioethics of Cloning
HumanCloning.org

I have a shitload more so if anyone wants any email me for em. (you surely can find my email address now can you)

Well I know it has little to do with Dolly, but many people have taken the wrong views and assumptions of what cloning really is.

Speedy's not a clone

The clones that have been produced, they say, often have problems severe enough - developmental delays, heart defects, lung problems and malfunctioning immune systems - to give pause to anyone thinking of cloning a human being. In one example that seems like science fiction come true, some cloned mice that appeared normal suddenly, as young adults, grew grotesquely fat.