Is Human Cloning an Inevitability?

Even as governments pass laws against it, scientists say they'll move ahead. Can this genie be put back? Thumbing their noses at their legion dissenters, three scientists announced Tuesday they are fully prepared to begin cloning humans.

The plan, outlined during a cloning conference sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences, calls for the impregnation of 200 women — each half of a couple desperate to benefit from what one of the three human cloning advocates, Dr. Severino Antinori, calls "therapeutic" cloning.

His turn of phrase is likely to raise a few eyebrows in the scientific community. In the ongoing debate over stem cell research, "therapeutic" cloning has referred to the reproduction of embryos for the purpose of gathering stem cells. The proposal offered by Dr. Antinori, Panayiotis Zavos and Brigitte Boisselier, on the other hand, apparently involves taking an egg from a human mother, removing the nucleus and implanting the nucleus of a cell from the person who’s being cloned. (This is the same method used by the scientists who cloned Dolly the sheep).

Even as Antinori, Zavos and Boisselier made their case, tempers flared and governments, from the United States to Italy, reiterated their condemnation of the trio’s plans. Shrugging their collective shoulders, the scientists seemed unfazed. Antinori, for one, plans to go ahead with his cloning — on the safety of an undisclosed Mediterranean island.

Click here to read our moral-compass guide to the science and ethics of cloning

For more on the cloning story, and a look back at the path that’s led scientists to this point, visit TIME.com’s special report on The Genetics Revolution