Cloning

Introduction

When scientists at Roslin Institute in Scotland created the sheep Dolly, the possibility of human cloning raised. People over the whole world were interested and concerned because of this breakthrough in science. This breakthrough was one step closer to human cloning. At that time it was very uncertain if it would be possible to clone humans in the future. There were many ethical and scientific difficulties at that point. This breakthrough also caused uncertainty about the meaning of cloning. Scientists use the word cloning for everything that had something to do with duplicating biological stuff.

What is cloning?

As I told in the previous paragraph there was a problem with the meaning of the word cloning. Most people thought it was just one thing. There are different types of cloning however. Using cloning technologies can be used for more things besides making genetic twins of another organism. If you want to form an opinion about cloning, it is important to understand the differences between the different types of cloning. There are three different types of cloning: (1) recombinant DNA technology or DNA cloning, (2) reproductive cloning, and (3) embryo cloning. They will be discussed in the following three paragraphs.

Recombinant DNA technology or DNA cloning

The term recombinant DNA technology is the same as DNA cloning. It comes down to cloning a gene and not a whole organism. Cloning a gene means that you take a gene from one organism and put it into a second organism. Cloning a gene can be used if the location of a disease on the DNA is known. By copying such gene they are able to examine it and they can test medication on it. This technology isn’t new, it has been around since the 1970s, and it is used in almost every biology lab.

Reproductive cloning

Reproductive cloning is a technology used to create an animal that has the same DNA as the original animal. This is the way Dolly the sheep was created. After removing the genetic material or the nucleus of an egg, the scientists have an empty egg. They put genetic material of a donor in the empty egg. This egg now contains the DNA of the donor. Before the egg can be put in the uterus of a female animal of the same species, it must be treated with chemicals. These chemicals stimulate the cell division. The embryo must be large enough before it can be put in the uterus, or else it would decease.

This method of cloning is quite new. However a Chinese scientist cloned a fish in 1963. That’s 33 years before Dolly the sheep was cloned. Apparently, he published his results in an obscure Chinese science magazine, which was never translated into English.
But the major problem is that the cloned animals die to young. The aging process of cloned animals goes faster then the aging process of animals that are not cloned.

Dolly's success is truly remarkable because it proved that the genetic material from an adult cell, such as a liver cell programmed to express only those genes needed by liver cells, could be reprogrammed to generate an entire new organism. Before this breakthrough, scientists believed that once a cell became specialized as a liver, heart, bone, or any other type of cell, the change was permanent and other unneeded genes in the cell would become inactive. Some scientists believe that errors or incompleteness in the reprogramming process cause the high rates of death, deformity, and disability seen among animal clones.

This is a list of animals which they tried to clone:
frogs: (1962) Unsuccessful
carp: (1963) Successfully cloned
sheep: (1996) Dolly
rhesus monkey: (female, January 2000) Tetra
pig: (March 2000) 5 Scottish PPL piglets, (female, August 2000) Xena
cattle: (males, 2001) Alpha and Beta
cat: (female, late 2001) CopyCat "CC"
mice: (2002) over a dozen
mule: (male, May 2003) Idaho Gem and (male, June 2003) Utah Pioneer
deer: (2003) Dewey
horse: (female, 2003) Prometea

The success rate has been very low: Dolly was born after 276 failed attempts; 70 calves have been created from 9,000 attempts and one third of them died young; Prometea took 328 attempts. With certain species such as dogs and rats no successful clones have been created at all. Many people believe that attempts to perform human cloning would be unethical, but some scientists have publicly announced their intention to do so. Some believe the Chinese may have already done so.

Embryo cloning

Embryo cloning is the production of human embryos for use in research. The goal of this process is not to create cloned human beings, but rather to harvest stem cells that can be used to study human development and to treat diseases. Stem cells are important to biomedical scientists because they can be used to generate almost any type of specialized cell in the human body. Stem cells are taken from the egg after it has divided for 5 days. The egg at this stage of development is called a blast cyst. The extraction process destroys the embryo, and this is the cause of an ethical discussion.
Many researchers hope that one day stem cells can be used to serve as replacement cells to treat heart disease, Alzheimer's, cancer, and other diseases. Using this technology it should be possible to make organs that will not be rejected by the body of a patient. This would be an enormous medical development, because the need for organ donation would be significantly reduced. But there still are many difficulties before we can produce cloned organs.

Should humans be cloned?

This is the major ethical question that has to be answered before scientists can start cloning humans. Today most people think humans shouldn’t be cloned. Today it is forbidden by the law to clone humans, but if it would be allowed in the future there is a large risk that humans would become some kind of working robots with no names, that is something no one agrees with.
Not only do most of the attempts to clone mammals fail, the worst thing is that about 30% of the clones that are born alive have many problems with their immunity system and offspring of cloned mammals is often born to large. So most of the clones die to young. It is still unknown what cloning would do to psychical development, and that is very important if you want to clone a human. It doesn’t matter that much if you clone a cow or a sheep, but if you want to clone a human it is extremely important that the clone has no damage to their brains.

My standpoint is that at this time there should be no human cloning. I think the development for organ donation is a good thing, but I don’t like the idea that there could be someone who is totally the same as me, and especially because most of the attempts to clone mammals fail or end up with complications that cause an early dead.