Cloning is the procedure used for obtaining an exact genetic replica of another cell, tissue, or organisms with the same genetic information. The copied material, which has the same genetic makeup as the original, is referred to as a clone. Cloning of plants has been happening for hundreds and thousands of years. However, human cloning had not been thought of before until the successful cloning of the first animal, Dolly the sheep, in 1996. The birth of Dolly was a major scientific and technological breakthrough. However, it also raised the possibility of human cloning, as well as many medical and ethical issues and concerns associated with this possibility. Following the cloning of Dolly, many other animals, including cows and mice have been successfully cloned. In 2013, over decades of challenges, Shoukhrat Mitalipov, an American biologist who heads the Center for Embryonic Cell and Gene Therapy, …show more content…
and his colleagues were the first to use somatic cell nuclear transfer to create a human embryo that could be used as a source of embryonic stem cells. This may perhaps be the sign that human cloning could possibly become successful one day in a not-too-distant future. There are many intentions of cloning whether it’s for medical purposes, industrial purposes or reviving extinct species. It is already believed to be unethical to create life for the purpose of destroying it, so human cloning should definitely be out of the question. Cloning for medical purposes has the potential to benefit large numbers of people. Much of what researchers learn about human disease comes from studying animal such as mice. Cloning these animals would increase the chances of discovering a cure for the diseases. Cloning can also be used to make stem cells which build, maintain and repair the body throughout our lives but the work requires trial-and-error and several generations of breeding. Which could mean generations of failure, resulting in a great deal of deceased animals. This leads to the point made earlier, is it really worth it to clone a living being? If the only way of achieving the goal is to go through a large amount of deaths, in addition it’s not guaranteed to work every time even if the goal is achieved. An example of this is ‘In Vitro Fertilization’ (IVF) in which the process is used to conceive a child outside the body, and the success rate is only at 20-35% (Resolve, 2015). Also, in cloning of Dolly, 277 eggs were used, 30 started to divide, nine induced pregnancy, and only one survived. This is a likely possibility that could too happen with human cloning as it uses a similar process. The movie ‘The Island’ directed by Michael Bay, is a film revolving around human cloning for medical purposes and its possibilities.
In the movie, people inside the facility implanted memories into the clones to make them think that the reason why they’re there is to work until they win the lottery to ‘the island’. However, ‘the island’ doesn’t exist, when a clone wins the lottery, they get taken to a room where their organs or baby will be harvested for the client and they, shortly after the procedure, get killed. Eventually, two clones discovered that they are clones, leading to their escape from the cloning facility and the release of every clones inside the facility to the real world. This film has given the viewers a perspective on what could actually happen if human cloning were to become successful; clones developed feelings and are just like any other human being. So by harvesting the clones without their consents for something the clients need, for example a baby or liver, basically mean torturing and killing a living person, treating the clone like a lab
rat. It can be said to be unethical from the points mentioned, as it is definitely not worth the cause to go through the trouble of pain and suffering as cloning has a low fertility success rate and is not guaranteed to work. Other possibility, like clones revolting against their creators could also be an issue considering that we have no control over them since after all they are human beings and will think for themselves. In conclusion, human cloning should not be performed or researched further considering all the risks and ethical issues.
In “Jennifer and Rachel,” Lee M. Silver argues that reproductive cloning deems permissible to those who encourage it, as opposed to those who reject it and don’t want to run the risk of how they’ll look in the eyes of society. Jennifer, an independent career driven woman, believes that the best way to have a baby of her own at her age is by cloning. Silver’s description of the cloning procedure is done by retrieving cells from the willing adult; prepare the cells for merging to unfertilized eggs, and then the embryos that develop successfully will be introduced to the uterus of the willing adult. Jennifer partakes in the cloning procedure and it was successful. Nine months later on March 15, 2050, Rachel was born.
Cloning, upon first hearing the word cloning, the thought of Dolly the sheep pops into the mind. The first and most used type of cloning though is not the type that creates animals, but rather DNA cloning. “Cloning is an umbrella term that science uses to indicate the duplication of biological material.”(Human Genome Project) Cloning is further broken down into three categories. The first is DNA cloning, which is the replication of DNA strands. DNA cloning is usually the process of getting a cell to replicate a desired gene for us. DNA cloning has been used since the 1970’s and has persisted as an effective cheap means of replicating DNA of interest in a foreign host cell. “To "clone a gene," a DNA fragment containing the gene of interest is isolated from chromosomal DNA using restriction enzymes and then united with a plasmid that has been cut with the same restriction enzymes.”(Human Genome Project) Plasmids are not part of the chromosome but they replicate along with the cell when it replicates and divides. Since they are not a part of the chromosome they are easier to isolate and manipulate without affecting the cells function. “When the f...
Human cloning is the process by which genetic material from one person would be artificially transferred into a human or animal egg cell, thereby beginning the life of a new human individual who has only one parent and who is genetically identical to that parent. The once impossible idea of cloning became a reality in 1997 when Scottish embryologist Ian Wilmut and his colleagues at the Roslin Institute in Scotland announced that a cloned sheep named Dolly was born. Dolly was created by removing the nucleus from a sheep egg cell and replacing it in the nucleus of a cell taken from the udder of another sheep. This said might sound good, but there are other pieces of information that need to be known about this process. ...
Victor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, started out as an intelligent young man that increasingly grew into an even more curious young man. His interest in the human body and creating life became almost became an obsession for him. He was determined to do what he needed to do in order to create the most incredible clone of a human. Victor went to great lengths to complete this occupation of his that took up nearly all of his time, including many nights of visiting the graveyards studying the human corpses. Getting the body parts was the easy part of this upcoming creation, it was going to be all the sleepless days and nights trying to create the veins, blood vessels, etc., that would be the challenging part of this whole ordeal.
successful clones often have problems with their body and are subject to a short lifespan ridden with health problems. This hurts the person or animal cloned rather than to help them, making cloning an immoral
This is explained by Craig Freudenrich. He discusses this on the website HowStuffWorks. Freudenrich tells of how Ian Wilmut and his colleagues successfully cloned Dolly the sheep at the Roslin Institute in Midlothian, Scotland. Dolly the sheep was the world's first successfully cloned mammal, cloned from an adult somatic cell. He writes how after Dolly, scientist have been cloning animals like cows and mice. “They rely on transplanting the genetic information from a specialized cell into an unfertilized egg cell, whose genetic information has been destroyed or physically removed.” (How Cloning Works) This information is very enlightening to anyone who questions how cloning works. Furthermore it secures the information needed to inform the general public of what they need to know to have a responsible and appropriate
In “Never Let Me Go” by Kazuo Ishiguro we see cloned human beings that are raised in a boarding school so that they can grow up and become organ donors. The main purpose of these kids was growing up and donating their organs one by one till they finally die at an early age. These kids were not treated as human beings. They were created in a test tube just to be a donor. The main character who was also a donor is the narrator of this story. Life should be controlled by the person that owns it and that person should make decisions how to live and where to live, clones are still human beings with soul and flesh there for they deserve human right. If they cannot get the right they deserve then cloning should be illegal unless there is understandable reason. These kids are raised in a place called hailsham, where they are taken care of so that they can stay healthy but they were not allowed to leave the school and socialize with the world till they turn eighteen and graduate.
Cloning is a recent innovative technique the National Institute of Health defines as a process employed to produce genetically identical copies of a biological entity. Depending on the purpose for the clone, human health or even human life can be improved or designed respectively. “Somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) is the most common cloning technique. SCNT involves putting the nucleus of a body cell into an egg from which the nucleus has been removed."^1 From this technique, an embryonic cell is activated to produce an animal that is genetically identical to the donor. Today, human cloning still remains as a vision, but because of the success of Dolly, the lamb, researchers are becoming more confident in the ability to produce a genuine
In recent decades, questions about genetic engineering, genetic modification, and cloning of animals and humans are on the minds of many. On February 27, 1997 when Dr. Ian Wilmut and his team sent chills down our spine with the announcement of the first successfully cloned sheep Dolly. At this time the reality of animal cloning stared us in the face while the human cloning was just around the corner.
Even though cloning methods have been in use for an extended period of time, the idea of a clone was never thought to be realistic until recently. For thousands of years, humans have been cloning plants through asexual propagation. This is simply the process of stem cutting or grafting a mammal was performed in Switzerland nearly 20 years after the carrot plant where mice cells were cloned. Later, in 1997, Dolly the sheep’s mammary cells were cloned (Lee). This was a major success for science because it was the first time an adult cell was used in which results in a clone of the previous generation of the plant and is still a method used today. It wasn’t until 1958 when modern cloning began with a carrot and in 1964 when scientist John Gurdon started the beginning of animal cell cloning of toad tadpoles. The first successful clone of embryonic cell. After scientists gained a greater knowledge of the process of cloning, they realized that it could possibly be used to benefit the world. In 2001, the first endangered species, the bull gaur, was cloned, and in...
There are many questions surrounding the concept of cloning. Is it morally correct? Are clones
Last of all, Cloning is not ethical, many religious groups look down upon cloning and think it’s not proper because they think it’s like playing God. Many scientists were mainly thinking about cloning animals and, most likely, humans in the future to harvest their organs and then kill them. “Who would actually like to be harvested and killed for their organs?” “Human cloning exploits human beings for our own self-gratification (Dodson, 2003).” A person paying enough money could get a corrupt scientist to clone anybody they wanted, like movie stars, music stars, athletes, etc (Andrea Castro 2005),” whether it be our desire for new medical treatments or our desire to have children on our own genetic terms (Dodson, 2003).
1) Robertson, John A. “Human Cloning and the Challenge of Regulation,” The New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 339, no. 2 (July 9, 1998), pp. 119-122.
In recent years our world has undergone many changes and advancements, cloning is a primary example of this new modernism. On July 5th, 1995, Dolly, the first cloned animal, was created. She was cloned from a six-year-old sheep, making her cells genetically six years old at her creation. However, scientists were amazed to see Dolly live for another six years, until she died early 2005 from a common lung disease found in sheep. This discovery sparked a curiosity for cloning all over the world, however, mankind must answer a question, should cloning be allowed? To answer this question some issues need to be explored. Is cloning morally correct, is it a reliable way to produce life, and should human experimentation be allowed?
Kazuo Ishiguro’s critically acclaimed 2005 Novel Never Let Me Go was influenced by cloning and stem cell research in the late 20th century. Many ethical discussions were raised, and Ishiguro displayed his perspective from his about clones that demonstrate the human experience to the core. The story was adapted into a film by the same name in 2010, directed by Mark Romanek. The novel explores plot, setting, character, literary techniques and themes by telling the story of cloned organ donors, forced to die for the good of humanity, all of which are well represented in the film adaptation.