The Benefits of Therapeutic Cloning Will the use of therapeutic cloning aid humanity in the years to come? It is a hotly debated topic, the center of its controversy concerning morals. Some of its critics believe cloning to be ethically unacceptable; others believe it is defective and its failures outweigh its successes (Brown, 2009, p. 75). There are, however, many possible uses for therapeutic cloning. By using various methods of therapeutic cloning, doctors can make great medical achievements and save lives. Scientists can harvest stem cells through therapeutic cloning to cure diseases and even replace tissues and organs. The use and practice of therapeutic cloning can benefit society. Therapeutic cloning is the cloning of a specific cell …show more content…
as a means of medical treatment. This type of cell, called a stem cell, is vital in the development and regeneration of the human body. The stem cell’s importance in therapeutic cloning is due to its unique ability: “When a stem cell divides, each of its two daughter cells has two choices: it can remain a stem cell, or it can differentiate into another cell type.” The stem cell’s aptitude for being able to change into any other cell is an ability unsurpassed by other types of cells. Nonetheless, the stem cells of an adult will most likely continue to either be a stem cell, or change into the type of cell from whence it came (Lim, 2013, p. 25). Yet new technology has proven that scientists are capable of changing these ‘adult’ stem cells into embryonic stem cells, which possess the ability to easily change into any cell and can be used for medical purposes. One particular scientist, Shinya Yamanaka, and his team of researchers discovered this. For their efforts, he along with fellow worker Sir John B. Gordon were awarded a Nobel Peace prize in Physiology or Medicine. One of the major benefits of therapeutic cloning would be curing disease. According to Alistair Brown’s Therapeutic Cloning: The Ethical Road to Regulation, “Therapeutic Cloning… may hold the key to unlocking treatments for several familiar malfunctions associated with human bodily tissue and/or human organs… because of disease” (Brown, 2009, p. 76). For example, in 2014, the Japan Ministry of Health approved the first ever use of autologous iPSCs (induced pluripotent stem cells) on humans (iPSCs are the result of a regular cell being turned into a stem cell). Their six patients, each suffering from macular degeneration (the degeneration of the retina), a leading cause in blindness, donated some of their skin cells, and iPSCs were extracted from the skin cells. Then the iPSCs were put back into the eyes of the patients, and their macular degeneration was cured. (Lim, 2013, p.28). This is only one example of the miraculous stem cell’s success. One group, StemBANCC, believes stem cells can do even more. They are researching stem cells to try to create drugs that can cure even the incurable diseases, such as dementia, autism, and diabetes (Lim, 2013, p. 28). By finding cures to these diseases, many of the special-needs and senior citizens could be partially or even completely cured of their illness. Another benefit therapeutic cloning could provide society would be their ability to heal injuries and even create organs. One such use would be healing burn victims and allowing them to grow new skin using stem cells: “ES (Embryonic Stem) Cells will be applied to areas of damaged tissue and encouraged to form new, healthy tissue, matching the particular tissue type.” This could be a vital cure that would dramatically decrease the number of deaths associated with burns (Brown, 2009, p. 77). Another possibility of therapeutic cloning would be to create and transplant organs. There is proof that organ transplants using iPSCs would be successful. For example, in Japan, human “liver buds” were grown from three kinds of stem cells and transplanted into mice subjects. The “liver” quickly connected with the host’s blood cells and functioned properly (Lim, 2013, p. 28). These promising successes, if continued, could allow human tests to occur, and perhaps later save lives. This is especially crucial for those who are on waiting lists for organ donors, because instead an organ -made from their own DNA- could be grown in a lab for them. Even though therapeutic cloning has much potentiality, it also has many critics.
The major controversy is surrounding the ethics of cloning because some of its methods involve the use and destruction of human embryos: “Many opponents disapprove of this research on the belief that the human embryo should be accorded full moral status” (Brown, 2009, p. 77). This belief is misleading, however. This is because “…scientists can now use adult skin cells to create a stem cell very similar to embryonic cells, but without the need for embryos… These induced cells also sidestep the ethical issues of embryonic stem cells, which are often created by destroying embryos” (Pollack, 2013, para. 12-13). So although therapeutic cloning is still controversial today, progress such as taking adult skin cells and converting them to embryonic stem cells, has been made to circumvent the problems surrounding cloning. Due to this progress, a whole new age of regenerative medicine could take place in the near …show more content…
future. After reading this paper, it can be gathered that therapeutic cloning has unlimited potential benefits to heal people.
It is a possible and likely treatment to several diseases, through the use of iPSCs. It can also heal injuries and even restore or create new organs by harnessing the untapped power of the stem cell. Finally, despite the major debate regarding cloning concerns how moral it is, due to the past use of embryonic stem cells, novel and more ethical methods have been made. Therapeutic cloning, through these ways and perhaps more, could change all of the ways patients are medically treated. Even more, in the near future therapeutic cloning could revolutionize the entire medical world. References Brown, A. (2009). Therapeutic Cloning: The Ethical Road to Regulation. Therapeutic Cloning: The Ethical Road to Regulation Part I: Arguments For and Against Regulations, 15:2, 75-79. April, 2017. Lim, H. A. (2013). Genes, Stem Cells, and Regenerative Medicine. April, 2017, www.asiabiotech.com Pollack, A. (2013, May 15). Cloning Is Used to Create Embryonic Stem Cells. Retrieved April, 2017, from
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/16/science/scientists-use-cloning-to-create-embryonic-stem-cells.html
Therapeutic cloning is the process whereby parts of a human body are grown independently from a body from STEM cells collected from embryos for the purpose of using these parts to replace dysfunctional ones in living humans. Therapeutic Cloning is an important contemporary issue as the technology required to conduct Therapeutic Cloning is coming, with cloning having been successfully conducted on Dolly the sheep. This process is controversial as in the process of collecting STEM cells from an embryo, the embryo will be killed. Many groups, institutions and religions see this as completely unacceptable, as they see the embryo as a human life. Whereas other groups believe that this is acceptable as they do not believe that the embryo is a human life, as well as the fact that this process will greatly benefit a large number of people. In this essay I will compare the view of Christianity who are against Therapeutic Cloning with Utilitarianism who are in favour of Therapeutic Cloning.
Children grow up watching movies such as Star Wars as well as Gattaca that contain the idea of cloning which usually depicts that society is on the brink of war or something awful is in the midsts but, with todays technology the sci-fi nature of cloning is actually possible. The science of cloning obligates the scientific community to boil the subject down into the basic category of morality pertaining towards cloning both humans as well as animals. While therapeutic cloning does have its moral disagreements towards the use of using the stem cells of humans to medically benefit those with “incomplete” sets of DNA, the benefits of therapeutic cloning outweigh the disagreements indubitably due to the fact that it extends the quality of life for humans.
You really cant discuss the pros and cons of something without first knowing the topic. Personally I feel that many individual strong stances on this issue are based on myth rather than fact. Stem cells can be obtained from both the skin cells of an adult and also from the embryo after 4 to 5 days of incubation. Embryonic stem cells are where most of the
By applying research from cloning normal cells to cloning stem cells, a wider range of people can be helped, and the cost of procedures will be lowered. Scientific research into cloning will allow doctors study how to safely replicate
Long after Shelley wrote her classic masterpiece Frankenstein and Huxley wrote Brave New World, the ethical controversy of cloning conflicts with modern artificial intelligence research. The question that challenges the idea of negative or positive behavior in a replicated machine relies on its similarity to the source of the clone, whether it emulates human behavior or acts as a “superintelligence” with supernatural characteristics void of human error. Humanity will not know the absolute answers concerning behavioral outcome without creating a physical being, an idea portrayed in Shelley’s Frankenstein in which the creation of a monster emulates from his creator’s attempts to generate life. At the time of the novel’s publication, the idea of replicating a soul portrayed a nightmarish theme with little consideration for the potential scientific advancements to facilitate in reality. It lead the genetic idea of manmade intelligence and its ethics emerging from the relativity of space, time, and original life on the planet. The debate of the existing possibility of sentient machines continues to progress, but the consideration of ethical questions such as “Should we create these artificial people?” and “How does this enactment define the soul and mind?” warranted from primitive questions about machine learning within the last century. After the initial proof of possibility for sentient machines, the perfection of cloning will generate “good” behavior at its perfect state several generations from now. The perfect machine portrays the potential for sensible human behaviors including compassion, mentality, empathy, alertness, and love. Humanity of the twenty-first century possesses the knowledge to fantasize the idea of artificial ...
"Human Cloning and Human Dignity: An Ethical Inquiry." The President's Council on Bioethics Washington, D.C. N.p., July-Aug. 2002. Web.
Those who favour stem cell research are optimistic about the continued developments in stem cell research will open doors to many breakthrough discoveries in biomedical science. The scientific and ethical questions arise as rapidly as the reaching of milestones in stem cell research. There are two main types of stem cells, namely embryonic stem cells and adult stem cells. Adult stem cells are undifferentiated cells in our body. But they have restricted-range of cells that they can further differentiate. On the contrary, embryonic stem cells have the ability to differentiate into nearly two hundred cell types in the human body, called pluripotency. The process of harvesting embryonic stem cells involves destruction of embryos (Mooney, 2009).
Cloning is, and always has been an extremely contentious topic. To some, the ethical complications surrounding it, are far more promiscuous than what scientists and medical experts currently acknowledge. Cloning is a general term that refers to the process in which an organism, or discrete cells and genes, undergo genetic duplication, in order to produce an identical copy of the original biological matter. There are two main types of artificial cloning; reproductive and therapeutic, both of which present their respective benefits and constraints. This essay aims to discuss the various differences between the two processes, as well as the ethical issues associated with it.
...rshal, V.S., and Jones, J.M. 1998. Embryonic stem cell lines derived from human blastocysts. Science 282, 1145-1147.
“Cloning represents a very clear, powerful, and immediate example in which we are in danger of turning procreation into manufacture.” (Kass) The concept of cloning continues to evoke debate, raising extensive ethical and moral controversy. As humans delve into the fields of science and technology, cloning, although once considered infeasible, could now become a reality. Although many see this advancement as the perfect solution to our modern dilemmas, from offering a potential cure for cancer, AIDS, and other irremediable diseases, its effects are easily forgotten. Cloning, especially when concerning humans, is not the direction we must pursue in enhancing our lives. It is impossible for us to predict its effects, it exhausts monetary funds, and it harshly abases humanity.
Stem cells offer exciting promise for future therapies, but significant technical hurdles remain that will only be overcome through years of intensive research. Stem Cells have the incredible potential to develop into many different cell types in the body during early life and growth. Scientists primarily work with two kinds of stem cells from animals and humans. The embryonic stem cells and the non-embryonic stem cells. Stem cells are the cells from which all other cells originate. In a human embryo, a large portion of the embryo’s cells are stem cells. These stem cells can be used for cell-based therapies. Cell-Based therapies are treatments in which stem cells are induced to differentiate into the specific cell type required to repair damaged or destroyed cells or tissues. Stem cells are versatile and offer the possibility to treat a number of diseases including Alzheimer’s, stroke, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, etc. The problem is that for the process of embryonic stem cell research and embryo will be destroyed if used. This raises a moral issue and questions of whether stem cell research is unethical or not.
It is normal to think cloning is something out of a science fiction orb. For many years, scientists have been telling the world that it’s impossible to clone humans, but they were all wrong. The technology of cloning humans is already here, as evidenced by Dolly the sheep, but it called forth questions about the role of God in society, the soul and even the quality of life a cloned individual would have (“16 important pros and cons”). Cloning technologies can prove helpful to researchers in genetics. With the history of cloning, one difference to help in mind, with dealing with cloning, is the reproductive cloning or therapeutic cloning.
John A. Robertson, “Human Cloning and the Challenge of Regulation,” The New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 339, no. 2 (July 9, 1998), pp. 119-122.
Recent discoveries involving cloning have sparked ideas of cloning an entire human body (ProQuest Staff). Cloning is “the production of an organism with genetic material identical to that of another organism” (Seidel). Therapeutic cloning is used to repair the body when something isn’t working right, and it involves the production of new cells from a somatic cell (Aldridge). Reproductive cloning involves letting a created embryo develop without interference (Aldridge). Stem cells, if isolated, will continue to divide infinitely (Belval 6). Thoughts of cloning date back to the beginning of the twentieth century (ProQuest Staff). In 1938, a man decided that something more complex than a salamander should be cloned (ProQuest Staff). A sheep named Dolly was cloned from an udder cell in 1997, and this proved that human cloning may be possible (Aldridge). In 1998, two separate organizations decl...
One of the most beneficial aspects to cloning is the ability to duplicate organs. Many patients in hospitals are waiting for transplants and many of them are dying because they are not receiving a needed organ. To solve this problem, scientists have been using embryonic stem cells to produce organs or tissues to repair or replace damaged ones (Human Cloning). Skin for burn victims, brain cells for the brain damaged, hearts, lungs, livers, and kidneys can all be produced. By combining the technology of stem cell research and human cloning, it will be possible to produce the needed tissues and organs for patients in desperate need for a transplant (Human Cloning). The waiting list for transplants will become a lot shorter and a lot less people will have to suff...