It was bound to happen sooner or later, but were we ready for sooner? The Associated Press reported Sunday that a group of scientists at Advanced Cell Technology, in Worcester, Mass., claimed to have cloned the first human embryo.

When you think of human cloning, the words of Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” resonate through the brain: COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY. You imagine a society likened to the movie “Gattaca” where parents choose the traits and health of their unborn children. Armies of identical robot-like people march through your dreams.

The president of the company said the process is not intended for human reproduction, and he wouldn’t want to see the science move in that direction. But instead, his goal, he continued, is to create human embryos through cloning and extract stem cells — master blank cells that can transform themselves — with the goal of using them to treat a variety of ailments.

It’s a bit scary, a bit exciting and, quite possibly, a bit dangerous.

If our government is going to allow cloning, it needs to start drawing the lines. Immediately. Whether the government was prepared for this or not, human cloning has jumped from the pages of science fiction novels and has done a little dance on our history pages.

Last summer, the House of Representatives voted to ban human cloning and set penalties of up to 10 years in prison and a $1 million fine for those convicted of attempting to clone humans.

The measure was never taken up by the Senate, so it never became law.

Human cloning is much like playing the hand of God. Scientists are toying with a whole new realm of ethics and morals. Is a clone a human being? Is it unethical to conduct possibly life-saving stem cell research on a cloned cell? Technically, if nurtured, the cell could grow into a human life, right? Or not?

A Florida Republican warned of a “slippery slope,” saying that the West has opened the door to reproductive cloning through the procedure.

“If you start allowing all these labs all over the place to create human clones, then it’s only a matter of time before somebody tries to bring a baby to birth because the implantation of those cloned embryos would occur within the privacy of the doctor/patient relationship,” said Rep. Dave Weldon, a doctor.

Now more than ever, it’s imperative that heavy restrictions and boundaries be laid in order to prevent our worst nightmares from becoming our worst realities.