A Dialogue Paper on Human Cloning

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A Dialogue Paper on Human Cloning

This dialogue is between two students at the university. Steve is a little uncomfortable about cloning, while Sally presents many valid arguments in favor of it. Steve presents many moral questions that Sally answers.

Steve: Hi, Sally. Are you aware that the Scottish embryologist, Ian Wilmut, cloned a sheep from adult cells, and now, there are many moral, economic, and political questions that must be answered.

Sally: Interestingly enough, I was just reading about this topic in a magazine. I was amazed at the simplicity of the cloning process used by Dr. Wilmut and his colleagues. The process of cloning a sheep begins by taking the cells from the udder of an adult sheep, and placing them in a culture with few nutrients. The purpose of this is to starve the cells so that they stop dividing. This switches off the active genes. While they starve these cells, they take an unfertilized egg from a different ewe, and remove the nucleus from this unfertilized egg. Then, they place the unfertilized egg cell next to one of the original starved cells

Steve: How do the two cells come together? Does it happen spontaneously?

Sally: No, it does not happen spontaneously. An electric pulse fuses the two cells together. A second electric pulse makes the cell divide. After six days, Dr. Wilmut placed this embryo into a different ewe, and after a normal gestation period, the new baby sheep named Dolly was born. She was named after Dolly Parton.

Steve: But cloning is not new. In 1952, researchers in Pennsylvania cloned a live frog. What makes Dr. Wilmut's achievement so special?

Sally: Yes, it is true that a frog was cloned in 1952, but those scientists used an embryonic cell. Dr. Wilmut used an adult cell.

Steve: What is the difference between using an embryonic cell and an adult cell?

Sally: Embryonic cells are "undifferentiated." Undifferentiated cells have not gone through changes that make some cells into skin cells or muscle cells or brain cells, for example. Undifferentiated cells can become any cell in the body because it can activate any gene on any chromosome, but as cells develop, the DNA of certain cells fold in particular ways making large portions of the DNA inaccessible. This makes sure that the wrong genes do not get turned on at the wrong time or in the wrong place.

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