Cloning

Researchers should be given more freedom to conduct their research. In fact the federal government should fund them. Experimenting with cloning offers many exciting possibilities for the future. It offers such things as saving our endangered species population, or even bringing extinct animals back to life. Cloning also offer many advances is health and medicine. As a result of all this, cloning has become one of the hottest topics in World news during the past few years. Many are still skeptical about the benefits of cloning, however in this essay I will make it clear why cloning is beneficial to the world and to society as a whole.

A clone is a group of genetically identical organisms. A clone has the identical DNA make up as the organism it was produced from. The topics of cloning was first taken seriously in 1996 after the break through with the sheep, Dolly. Dolly proved that the impossible could come true with hard work and dedication. Dolly was the first successful clone to come out after hundreds of other failed attempts. Dolly was produced by a group of Scottish researcher, headed by embryologist Ian Wilmut of the Roslin Institute. To produce Dolly, they took mammary-gland cells from an adult sheep and placed them in a solution that stripped them of their nutrients. This caused the cells to stop growing for a few days. Then, using a spark of electricity, they fused each

mammary cell with an enucleated egg cell. The cells that resulted from this process were then put into surrogate mother sheep to complete their development. After about 300 failures because of problems getting the eggs to accept the cells, a sheep named Dolly was born in July 1996. In his article "Cloning For Medicine," Ian Wilmut stated that "genetics tests proved beyond doubt that Dolly is indeed a clone of an adult." Dolly appeared healthy at first, but later showed signs of early aging. This occurred because Dolly was made using cells from an adult that was already 6 years old. In April of 1998, Dolly proved that she could at least breed normally when she gave birth to a healthy lamb. The lamb was not a clone, but was the result of a natural mating between Dolly and a male sheep.

Many further advances have come along since Dolly. Scientists has come up with more efficient ways of cloning than was used with Dolly. With the electric shock method the cells usually were greatly damaged and this caused many complications with the cells fusion. But now they use the double nuclear transplantation method in the beginning of the cloning process. In this method instead of electric fusing, they injected the needed proteins and parts of the cell into the mother egg. This method greatly reduces the amount of damage to the cells. The double nuclear method made the cells more easily accepted by the eggs and in effect made the success rate of cloning much higher.

In March of 2000, Scientists in Edinburg, Scotland made even further advances in the future evolvement of cloning, when they created a group of five

pig clones. They were created from using the genetic material taken from a body

cell of an adult female pig. Then in 2001, these same scientists announced that they made an even greater development; they created a group of cloned pigs that contained some genes the came from a jellyfish. This experiment was set up to see if it would be possible to genetically manipulate pigs so that their organs could be used, without being rejected, in the human body. This proved that genetically modified pig could be used as a source of organs for human organ transplants.

The latest breakthrough in the evolvement of cloning was announced in November 2001, where scientist in Massachusetts said that they have successfully created human embryos through cloning. This can be used to treat many of the more serious life treating diseases that we deal with today. These Scientists call their breakthrough "therapeutic cloning". The goal of therapeutic cloning is to produce a healthy copy of a sick person's tissue or organ for transplant. They said that they did not set up this experiment to clone a human life, but set it up to clone the stem cells. These stem cells can be used to fight off a variety of ailments, including Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease and even diabetes. In his article "Cloning For Medicine," Ian Wilmut states that "at present, thousands of patients die every year before a replacement heart, liver or kidney becomes available." This finding is the first step in making life a lot better for the people that suffer from these diseases.

Imagine if one day someone came out and stated that it is possible to

bring back any extinct animal to life. They can even take animals off the endangered species list. We would all be glad and give them our approval to

make this happen. Using the cloning technique, we would be able to actually do this. The possibility of this occurrence is unbelievable. We would have a limitless amount of food available to us. There would be great medical advances from this because extinct animals and plants hold the cure for many diseases and ailments. Bringing back extinct species would be a great achievement and something that would greatly help our lives become easier. Scientists have already started experimenting on cloning gaurs, which are on the endangered species list. The first clone was born in January 2002. It died a few days after of a common disease, but what this experiment proves is that later on when scientist have perfected the cloning process, it would be possible to clone species that are near extinction. Cloning would make it possible for us to raise healthier livestock. This would help us humans be healthier and stronger because we will get lean, healthy meat to eat, rather than eating the steroids stuffed, generic supermarket meat we get to eat today. This breakthrough would be very beneficial because it would lead to a better world for us all.

The perfection of the cloning process would bring about many new medical advances. It has the possibility to introduce to the world of medicine new techniques such as xenotransplant, which would save thousands of lives. Xenotransplant is when scientists use the cloning process to genetically alter the

cells of an animal, so that its organ can be successfully