• In 1996 a team of scientists at the Roslin Institute performed the first successful cloning of an entire animal, a sheep named Dolly. Since then, the debate over ethics has raged. While cloning may once have simply been in the imaginations of science-fiction writers, technology has made this fantasy into a reality, for better or worse.
  
  

Medical Benefits

• When most people think of cloning they probably think of whole things like a full animal or human being cloned, but smaller things, such as organs, can also be cloned. When a person needs a new organ he often goes on a waiting list and it's not uncommon for him to not get the organ in time. Cloning, however, could create a spare organ, meaning there could potentially be a surplus of the most transplanted organs.
  
  

Aging & Fertility Benefits

• While some states have already banned human cloning, it offers a possible way for infertile parents to have children. Also, according to Methods of Healing, many people believe that cloning will offer the answers to slowing down and even stopping or reversing the aging process. While neither of these technologies are ready for use, the possibilities they offer the future of the human race are very exciting.
  
  

Protecting Endangered Species

• Another benefit cloning offers is the ability to protect endangered species. As we've seen with Dolly, the cloned sheep, the technology already exists and has been successfully used. Despite the best efforts of conservationists, species are still going extinct every day. Cloning may offer a way to save some of these species from extinction.
  
  

Food Supply

• Similar to how it can help keep endangered species around, cloning can help ensure that humans always have food. Cloning can create genetically superior plants and animals that can feed more people. Theoretically, cloning food could completely solve the world's shortage of food and allow people to grow and raise genetically altered crops and livestock in areas where it was previously impossible.
  
  

Diversity

• One of the disadvantages to cloning is that the clone is exactly the same as the original. While this can also be an advantage in some instances, life and evolution exist in part because of how different everything is. The I Love India website says that lessening the diversity of genes will negatively affect our adaptation ability. This problem also translates into other animals and plants, which could be weakened genetically by too much cloning.
  
  

Uncertainty

• When scientists created Dolly it took them 277 eggs before they got it right. This gives cloning the disadvantage of uncertainty. So far, the technology just isn't far enough to see consistently successful results in the lab, meaning we're still far from potentially stopping the effects of aging.