Following surprising claims this week by South Korean researchers that they cloned an embryo from the cell of a 30-year-old woman, scientists and ethicists said cloning of humans, while controversial, is likely to be achieved sometime soon. "The question isn't whether they did it or not, but whether there is any scientific reason to believe any top human fertility expert can't try and even succeed in cloning a human," said Randall Prather, an animal embryo …showed first 75 words of 1041 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1041 total…don't seem to provide any yet either, that you can conceive a child this way without a high risk that the child will be born physically damaged," she said. She and others said that, in fact, the current moratorium on research may inhibit efforts to assure that human cloning is done safely. Most ethicists said, however, they expect that much more work must be done in animals, especially primates, before any human cloning should proceed.