First there was Rats now someone, somewhere is trying to clone a human Now

Scientists have been cloning animals for many years. In 1952, the first animal, a tadpole, was cloned. Researchers have since cloned a menagerie of large and small animals including a wild ox, sheep, goats, cows, mice, pigs, rats, cats and rabbits.

Some have been named, including Ralph the Rat and CC the cat (short for copy cat or carbon copy) but none has outshone the most famous clone of all, Dolly the Sheep. In 1997 Ian Wilmut and other scientists at Scotland's Roslin Institute created Dolly from an unnamed mother, in what Science magazine hailed as the breakthrough of the year: the first mammal cloned from the cell of an adult animal rather than an embryo, proving that adult cells can be manipulated to take up new forms.

Not only did Dolly make human cloning a more realistic prospect than ever before, she also spawned a whole ethical debate.

Snuppy - short for Seoul National University Puppy - has reignited that debate. The puppy is the latest achievement of the team lead by cloning pioneer Professor Woo-suk Hwang. While geneticists hailed the birth as a step towards beating human diseases (many canine diseases are similar), others called for a worldwide ban on human cloning saying the dog had brought the eventuality closer.

Rats are always the first choice...