Animal cloning has been occurring for nearly two decades, starting in 1996 with the creation of Dolly the sheep. Cloned through a cell taken from a six-year-old ewe by the Roslin Institute in Midlothian, Scotland, Dolly was born to a surrogate mother after spending her first six days in a test tube. Since the successful birth and life of Dolly, a variety of animals from carp, to Rhesus monkeys, to wolves have been cloned.

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The possibility of bringing back something similar to a former pet is alluring for any animal lover, which was the motivation of Barbra Streisand, who recently announced in a Variety interview that two of her three dogs are $50,000 clones of one that passed away in 2017. They were cloned from cells taken from the mouth and stomach, and despite this and their identical appearances, Streisand states that, “They have different personalities,” from the original.

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The main issue with cloning comes from the more ethical sides of the procedure. Sooam Biotech, a South Korean lab, clone dogs, and claims a “33 to 40 percent” success rate in their procedure according to the New York Times. The rest of these attempts end in miscarriage. Dr. Mark E. Westhusin, a cloning expert at Texas A & M University claims that in cattle, “100 attempts to create a clone typically result in a single live calf.” And in mice, with the highest efficiency of any animal cloning, there is only a “2 to 3 percent” success rate according to Dr. Ryuzo Yanagimachi, a University of Hawaii researcher. A story by the New York Times further describes the possible problems that clones could experience, if they are one of the few that makes it to life. The story states that “Scientists say they see what appear to be genetic problems almost every time they try to clone.” Examples include mouse clones growing obese despite eating the same amount as identical mice, cow clones are often born with enlarged hearts or underdeveloped lungs.

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And with the questionable ethics surrounding animal cloning, there’s an even stronger negative view that surrounds human cloning. Kerry Bowman, a bioethicist at the University of Toronto, says that, “Many people find cloning abhorrent, very unnatural and very disturbing.” Some of this simply comes from a misunderstanding of the outcome of cloning, with people assuming the process will create humans that look and act exactly the same. Like with animals, however, human clones would be more similar to twins with identical looks but different personalities. Lee Silver, a Princeton University professor, states that a clone would essentially be a “later born identical twin,” to the original. Some of the controversy, however, comes from the potential secondary effects of cloning. CBC News states that animal clones have experienced effects such as “deformities, premature birth and arthritis.” It’s unlikely that human clones wouldn’t share similar issues.

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Despite all of the negatives, the University of Utah has created a website describing the benefits of cloning besides simply cloning pets. One of these benefits is stem cell research, in which researchers can use cloning to create stem cells genetically identical to an individual. The cells could potentially be used to grow whole organs, or diseased cells can be grown to help researchers understand the disease and create potential treatments. Cloning can also be used to revive endangered or extinct species, such as a Harvard team attempting a “de-extinction” of the wooly mammoth by using an Asian elephant surrogate. While this process has not moved past the production of wooly mammoth cells yet, and the aim of the process is to create more of a “hybrid elephant-mammoth embryo,”, the implications of using cloning as a tool against the rising rate of extinction is very promising.