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Cloning
Cloning Humans Is Ethically Permissible The question whether it is ethically permissible to clone humans has been a debate in the U.S. and in other parts of the world for some time. There are some good reasons that human cloning is relevant in our society, and there are some goods reasons that we s

Cloning
During the past few centuries, technology has reached a new level. With breakthroughs from the invention of electricity to the development of the Internet, these advances have made a huge impact on society. Every day brings the question of what will come next, and what technologies will further enha

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...

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