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Cloning Technology Essay, Research Paper

Cloning can be a very sensitive subject. It seems that it?s a battle between

science and ethics. Does the ladder outweigh the former or vice versa? Maybe a

few definitions will shed some light on the subject. ?Cloning is to create a

genetic duplicate of an individual organism through asexual reproduction, as by

stimulating a single cell? (Webster?s 211). ?Parthenogenesis is reproduction of

organisms without conjunction of gametes of opposite sexes.? (Webster?s 800).

Cloning has its medical uses, but do the ethical implications outweigh the

advantages?

The goal of genetic engineering is that every child be born strong,

healthy, and well suited to make its way to the world. If genetic engineering

would be used in this way the world would probably be a place of less disease.

Sure it may be unethical to do some tests on humans, but without them medical

progress would come to a halt. Cloning might also directly offer a way of

curing diseases or a technique that could extend means to acquiring new data for

the sciences of embryology and how organisms develop as a whole over time.

Science has been trying for years to come up with cures for genetic diseases and

so far haven?t really come up with anything that is truly helpful. On the other

hand, with the technology of genetic engineering scientists may finally be able

to start to understand the causes of diseases and to develop possible treatments

and even prevention. For instance, the most studied disease is Cystic Fibrosis.

Although, we have not found a cure yet, science !

might be getting close to coming up with a way of preventing Cystic Fibrosis.

Science has made some major discoveries in the past forty years. In the

1960?s two French scientists by the names of Jacques Monod and Francois Jacob

showed that genes can be turned on and off by what are called regulator genes.

If it were possible to manipulate the regulator genes, than it would be possible

to turn Cancer cells off and prevent it. It is expected that 185,000 people

will be diagnosed with a brain tumor alone in 2000. That?s just brain Cancer,

imagine how many lives would be saved if all Cancer cells could be turned off.

Cloning isn?t just an advantage to the medical field. It would provide a

link for a replacement to artificial insemination. Couples, who are unable to

have children, or have genetic disorders, could use cloning to produce a child.

Plus, women who are single could have a child using cloning instead of

artificial insemination.

Natural cloning occurs too. All plants, some insects, algae, unicellular

organisms that conduct mitosis or binary fissions, and identical twins are all

clones of each other. As long as genetic make-up is the same they are clones,

and a splitting embryo that creates two identical embryos produces twins. The

difference between twins and clones, however, is that twins are new in genetic

variation and unique from anything that came before them. Even if clones don?t

have genetic variation they would closely resemble identical twins and more than

likely would be accepted by the world as twins would. After all, there are some

eight million identical twins alive today, so it is safe to say that about eight

million ?human clones? are alive today. Plus, who is to differentiate between a

clone and an identical twin? The world isn?t going to be able to distinguish

between the two anyway.

Cloning is going to continue to be the subject of books, television

shows, and movies. It has already been featured numerous times on the Discovery

Channel and TLC. Dolly, the cloned sheep, was featured on the news for about

four weeks. It is easy to get carried away and start thinking about what

cloning will do to our future. However, it?s better to stop fantasizing about

how human clones are going to take over the job market, but to look at what

cloning has already done.

Thus far only the advantages of cloning have been described. It is only

fair to know that cloning possesses some bad aspects as well. In case one

didn?t know already genes are the basic units of inheritance. They are what

make a plant, an animal, or a human being resemble its parents. Clones are

carbon copies. They have the genetic information of only one parent. There is

no mixing of genes with the chance of change. Therefore, clones would be

deprived of a feeling of individuality and uniqueness. At least with natural

reproduction genetic variation occurs and makes every person an individual.

Without genetic variation everyone would be exactly the same and the world would

be boring.

Not only will it erase individuality, which is almost bad enough in it,

but also it

will also eliminate the ?bad genes? and lead to dangerous narrowing of diversity

in the

gene pool. What does that mean? It means that if everyone is cloned over and

over again

off the same genes, there is a bigger chance of a mutated gene being prominent

and then

there would be no way to get rid of it. This is the main reason that science is

reluctant to

clone humans. So, what happens when we decline genetic diversity and the gene

pool

and we lose the ability to clone? Well, that?s simple we resort to a little

process known as

inbreeding. Inbreeding also increases the chance of transmitting mutated genes.

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