Human Cloning. Human reproductive cloning - producing a genetic copy of an existing person using somatic cell nuclear transfer - has never been done. Many scientists believe that it can never be safe. In opinion polls , , overwhelming majorities consistently reject its use. Human clones have long been a topic of science fiction, but how far off are they in reality? Let's take a look at current advances and see when and where we might see the first human clone. Human reproductive cloning is unethical, but the production of cells from cloned embryos could offer many potential benefits. So, can human cloning be made safe? Nature Reviews Genetics - Human Any attempted human cloning would most likely utilize "reproductive cloning" techniques — an approach in which a "mature somatic cell," most probably a skin cell, would be used, according to It would be theoretically possible to clone humans, but, to date, there are no records of an actual fully developed human ever being cloned, Live Science reported. The closest we have come to this is the 1997 cloning of our closet relative: the monkey . News Following is a transcript of the video. Narrator: We've been able to clone human embryos for about seven years. But as far as we know, no one's actually cloned a whole person. Turns out, Can a human individual be cloned? The correct answer is, strictly speaking, no. What is cloned are the genes, not the individual; the genotype, not the phenotype. The technical obstacles are immense even for cloning a human's genotype. Ian Wilmut, the British scientist who directed the cloning project, succeeded with Dolly only after 270 trials. Not only is cloning inefficient and dangerous, there's just not a good enough reason to make a human this way. But making e more more We've technically been able to clone human beings It is likely biologically possible to clone a human being, but putting ethics aside, the shear number of resources needed to do it successfully would serve as a significant barrier. To make a clone, scientists transfer the DNA from an animal's somatic cell into an egg cell that has had its nucleus and DNA removed. The egg develops into an embryo that contains the same genes as the cell donor. Then the embryo is implanted into an adult female's uterus to grow. qRL242t.