of literary plausibility and into the arena of scientific fact and research. But the term cloning itself has scientific antecedents. What is called in vitro fertilization, or IVF, a staple practice of animal husbandry since the 1920s, was reportedly first accomplished with human beings in 1978. IVF involves extracting mature eggs from a woman and incubating and culturing them with sperm, which may fertilize the egg within 48 hours. The Encyclopaedia Britannica continues:
The potential embryo is then placed in a growth medium, where it is observed periodically for division into two-cell, four-cell, and eight-cell stages. During this period the mother receives progesterone to prepare her uterine lining for implantation of the embryo. The embryo, which at this point is known as a blastocyst, is introduced through the cervix into the uterus, in which the blastocyst seems to float free for about three-and-a-half days. If the procedure is successful, the embryo implants itself in the uterine wall, and pregnancy begins ("In Vitro Fertilization").
The Britannica goes on to note the bioethical controversy that has surrounded IVF since its initial use with human subjects, citing moral objections articulated chiefly, though not solely, by the Roman Catholic Church. IVF technology, which is not untypically resorted to by couples who have experienced problems conceiving children the old-fashioned way, does not have a 100% success rate. That being so, it anticipates artificially preserving and/or discarding human embryos that are not implanted. That would constitute the majority of embryos employed in the procedure, since by one estimate only 15% of all women undergoing IVF give birth to a child and by another "the chance of a live birth resulting from cases when a single embryo is transferred is less than 7 percent" (Cohen and Tomkin 16). As well, the technology anticipates fertilization by a donor who has no personal connection to the mother...