Don't you sometimes wish that you could send a replica of yourself to fulfill all your responsibilities while you yourself take it easy?  Well, scientist Samuel Wood, chief executive officer of California stem cell research company Stemagen, has a taken step in that direction by being the first man to clone himself.

This is how he did it: Wood and his colleagues harvested unfertilized egg cells from young women having in vitro fertilization. They then replaced the nuclei of the egg cells with DNA from skin cells taken from both Wood and another scientist. Wood and co. then zapped the egg cells with electricity to jumpstart the fertilization process, and brought about pinhead-sized embryos which, unfortunately, only lasted five days.

Critics, however, thought the research unjust, claiming that people were "creating human beings with the intention of destroying them." The Vatican condemned the research as "the worst type of exploitation of the human being." Other scientists welcomed the breakthrough with cautious arms, yet also questioned the validity of Wood's research.

Wood et al. begged to differ, arguing that the research was a "critical milestone" in the efforts of medical science to treat diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Stem cells taken from cloned embryos would circumvent the body's tendency to reject foreign objects, since the stem cells would be a perfect match of the patient's cells.