Term paper on Cloning

Free Cloning papers

cloning
I choose this article to comprehend the abilities which bioethics gives us. Through generations, technology has advanced immensely. Though cloning is a new technology to the public, it has been around since 1978 “The birth of Louise Brown, the first test-tube baby, whom generated great controversy

cloning
When Dr. Ian Wilmut created Dolly, a fully formed life from another sheep's cell, it generated many different questions around the world. Among these topics is the heated questions of whether or not humans should be cloned. With the new technology called "human cloning," we are trying to find a way

CLONING: Is it really worth it?

If you pay any attention to the news whatsoever you’ve probably heard about cloning. Cloning is the most controversial issue today. Quite simply put, cloning is duplicating or making a copy of something, usually a cell or DNA. Scientists for a while now successfully have been testing it out on animals. A clone, however, is only genetically identical to its donor, not physically or behaviorally identical. Cloning is a very touchy topic at the moment because it is a question of ethics and morality. Also with the cloning of animals already accomplished it is only a matter of time before the first human could be cloned which the mere thought of scares people. However, cloning is a scientific breakthrough which inevitably will have a drastic effect on everyone in the world.

Unknown too much of the public, cloning has been going on for several decades now. However, it has recently become a hot topic since the emergence of Dolly, a sheep who was the first ever cloned mammal, but it has been researched since the 1950s. This is not known by everyone because it was not such a big deal because scientists were not as successful as they are today. Cloning experiments began in the year 1953 with a group of scientists in Cambridge, England. These scientists attempted to clone frogs. However, the success rate was only about nine percent, and of the ones that were successful they had many defects and abnormalities(Gurdon 27). Also around the early 1980s, another group of scientists began to attempt to clone mice. Like other scientists they had several problems doing so until 1983 when they successfully cloned a mouse. It was these scientists who paved the way for the animal experiments and set the scientists today down the right path for the research they are doing now.

The science of cloning could either be a medical miracle or a nightmare for the human race. Since scientists have gained the ability to clone cells and other simple structures they have progressed onto attempting to clone animals. This alone is a very high accomplishment but it has opened the options of cloning humans. Many people argue that cloning is an act of cruelty upon animals since it required 270 attempts to clone the first mammal, Dolly. All of these attempts resulted in the death of the animal because the clone was not properly developed and died. The problems with the clones were mainly that their organs had not fully developed or had not developed properly.

Dolly is the first ever cloned mammal. Dolly was created by the scientists at the Roslin, Institute in Edinburg, Scotland. The scientists first obtained genetic material from an ewe and then inserted the genetic material into a “denucleated egg...and implanted it into a surrogate mother” who then gave birth to Dolly(www.vr-net.com/seercity/). Dolly came out to be exactly like the donor of the genetic material. This was a huge leap in the progress of animal cloning because Dolly was the first cloned mammal not to be cloned with defects. Dolly was a huge breakthrough in the field of animal cloning. Ian Wilmut, the head of the Roslin Institute, still remains cautious and claims: "We've no idea if this would work, and everyone involved thinks it would be unethical to try it in people. It's illegal anyway, even though it makes a good science-fiction story" (www.vr-net.com/seercity/).

There are many benefits for humans that could come from animal cloning, but on the other hand, there also are many risks that we will be taking while cloning animals. Animal cloning could lead to improved food, medicine, as well as many other things. As for food, animal and plant cloning allows people to choose the exact traits and characteristics to create in the food source. This would improve the overall quantity as well as quality of food. This process is also much quicker and more reliable than manual breeding for the exact traits. Cloning of plant and animals could also be very beneficial because it could help produce more and better quality human necessities such as: materials used for clothing, shelter, and fuel. Another huge benefit of cloning is that it could help save endangered species. When a species is beginning to become endangered scientists could clone them in order to increase the population. Taiwanese scientist have actually already done this with an endangered species of pig(www.vr-net.com/seercity/). Another benefit of animal cloning is that scientists hope to use them as bio-reductors to grow human hormones, antibiotics, anesthesia, proteins, and other things as well. ...

1. Kitcher, Phillip. “Whose Self Is It, Anyway?”

The Sciences May./June. 2000: B6.

3. Meade, Harry M. “Dairy Gene.”

The Sciences May/June 2000: 20-25.

4.Gurdon, J.B. “The Birth of Cloning.”

The Sciences, May/June 1997: 27-31.

5. Anonymous, “One Giant Leap Into The Unknown.”

Online. Internet. 11 November 1997. Available:

www.newscientist.com/nsplus/insight/clone/smallstep.html.

6. Anonymous. Online. Internet.

11 June 2000. Available:

www.vr-net.com/seercity.

7. Anonymous. No title available.

Online. Internet. 12 June 2000. Available: www.kaiwan.com/~mcivr/clon21.html