Human Organ Cloning- I want to know what is the deal with this? How
soon will they be able to do it? Can the do it already? Who do you
think would be doing it? I don't care if it's stem cells, straight-up
cloning, or what, but any method to create new organs that are
genetically identical to those a person already has so it can be
implanted without possibility of rejection. I emailed the Roslin
Institute, who cloned the sheep Dolly and are now moving into human
experimentation, asking about the possibility of submitting a DNA
sample and getting back an organ with my DNA, but got no response. So,
I want you to find out for me the answer to this question.

Dear Emperor of the Universe, 

Partially, the idea of cloning in order to yield organs has been
already tested. "Therapeutic cloning: (a.k.a. Somatic cell nuclear
transfer or research cloning): This starts with the same procedure as
is used in adult DNA cloning. The resultant embryo would be allowed to
grow for perhaps 14 days. It's stem cells would then be extracted and
encouraged to grow into a piece of human tissue or a complete human
organ for transplant. The end result would not be a human being; it
would be a replacement organ, or piece of nerve tissue, or quantity of
skin. The first successful therapeutic cloning was accomplished in
2001-NOV by Advanced Cell Technology, a biotech company in Worcester,
MA." (SOURCE: Religious Tolerance Website,
<http://www.religioustolerance.org/clo_ther.htm>).

See the Advanced Cell Technology site at <http://www.advancedcell.com/> 

However, "But the fetuses were grown for that long only because
researchers have not yet found a way to harvest stem cells from a new
bovine embryo, said Robert Lanza, medical director at ACT." (SOURCE:
"The Next ACT in Clone Controversy" WIRED,
<http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,53104,00.html>).

You could read about ACT's work in another Wired article, "Seven Days
of Creation" January 2004
<http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.01/clones.html?tw=wn_tophead_3>.

This, on the bottom line, was done on animals - except for skin
transplants (that are not exactly cloning). ""Experiments have already
been conducted using cows in which cloned embryos were implanted,
gestated to the early fetal stage, aborted, and their organs harvested
for transplantation." (SOURCE: "State of Cloning"
<http://www.nationalreview.com/lopez/lopez200401051346.asp>).

Lately, Prof. Panos Zavos of the Andrological Institute of America
<http://www.aia-zavos.com/index.html> claims to have being able to
clone an embryo, in order to create twins, from which one will be
developed into a full human being, and the other will be used, if
necessary, as a source for organs.

This will be done in a method called "Blastomere separation", or
twinning. It "involves splitting a developing embryo soon after
fertilisation of the egg by a sperm (sexual reproduction) to give rise
to two or more embryos.The resulting organisms are identical twins
(clones) containing DNA from both the mother and the father. Before
making his shock announcement, Dr Panos Zavos unveiled plans to seek a
woman prepared to receive a split embryo, half of which would be used
for "spare part" surgery." (SOURCE: ic Wales, "What is Cloning"
<http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0600uk/content_objectid=13832834_method=full_siteid=50082_headline=-What-the-cloning-debate-is-all-about-name_page.html>).

However, the plan, concieved with Dr. Paul Sainsbury, is highly
controversial, and has not been publically tried.
SEE: 
"'Body spares' cloning condemned" ITV News 17 Jan 2004,
<http://www.itv.com/news/671979.html>.

I hope this gave you a review of the current trends in cloning. I
recommend that you'll follow Google News on the question with the
keywords "therapeutic cloning":
<http://news.google.com/news?num=50&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22therapeutic+cloning%22>
(On your left hand bar you have the opportunity to receive news alerts
from Google News). In order to search for an answer, I searched for
"therapeutic cloning" 
cloning organ
cloning organ human 

Please contact me if you need further clarification on this answer
before you tip/rate it.

The answer was good. It pretty much told me what I wanted to know.
Very thorough, thanks.

Cloning a person in their entirety - any time now - the problems are
more ethical than technical.  Take the organ you want and throw away
the rest.

Creating individual organs - very difficult - there is no "brain"
gene, or "liver" gene.  Nor is there any set of such genes for any
organ.  The process of tissue differentiation and embryogenesis are
inextricably linked.

Skin (the largest organ) may be a little easier since it is of
relatively simple structure.

In response to the comment that was already made by xarqi-ga, I think
the idea with organ cloning is not to originally clone just the one
organ, but to- as you so unceremoniously put it- throw away the rest.
You would start cloning the whole embryo, then once organs started to
differentiate, you seperate out just the organ you want. The rest
dies, and the organ you want grows to maturity. The point is that when
you harvest the organ, the embryo is only a few hours or days old, so
there's really not much ethical question: it's only a few cells big.
And, not to sound heartless, but I don't really care about "ethical
problems" anyway, as long as there are no technical problems, I just
want to know when they can do it and who's going to do it.

I'm pretty sure no one's planning on answering this, are they? I know
the $$ isn't much, but it's really all I can afford right now.

It may be being done with skin - hey - when you think about it, that
is how skin graftng works!