[Gui Cavalcanti]

Alright, I'm defending the methods of therapeutic cloning here. For the record, I'm an atheist, but I won't get involved in the religion/science debate, because I don't have time and must get off to do homework sometime soon... I've read quite a few articles on how this is done in magazines like Popular Science, Discovery, etc. and online dispatches like Nature, so I think I can have my facts mostly straight.

The way therapeutic cloning was going (for limbs, organs, etc.) was not that these organs were removed from a baby at 9 months or some other strange concept like that. Limbs are literally grown.

Stem cells are used from embryos (or, alternatively, from the brain of the patient [note, same DNA as receiver] or spinal fluid [note, same DNA as receiver], but embryos work best right now) in a solution that lets cells grow in the types they need to be. Cells are effectively "grown" onto a mold of what they need to be - this was recently done where a sheep's heart was grown (from 0 to fully functional adult heart, no maturing necessary) onto a mold of what it should look like. A CAT scan was used to fully map every crevice and bit of material in a healthy heart, and then used as a base.

What's really a shame is that stem cell research was leaning towards making stem cells from our own bodies more effective - instead of using embryos, they were researching how to make stem cells available in your body to work for you. Therefore, there wouldn't be this massive debate over embryos

(Person 1: You can't kill a living human!
Person 2: How far back do you trace a living human?
Person 1: When they're in a mother's womb!
Person 2: So a zygote (1 cell, where we all start) is a perfect human being, even though millions of things can happen to it to make sure that it won't be alive when it leaves the womb?
Person 1: Yes.
Person 2: ...)

Which is where I believe a lot of the religious debate comes in.

One last thing. As for the cancer treatment using cloning methods, drugs would have to be custom made from a person's own DNA, so no mass-brands would be immediately available.