Therapeutic cloning is the growth of a tissue and is used to produce a healthy replacement of a sick person’s organ or tissue for a transplant. The cells of humans are highly specialised such as the liver, heart, skin and nerve cells. Researchers have identified that embryonic stem cells have the ability to develop in to any other type of cell in the body such as the liver and brain. “The hope is that eventually it may be possible to use such cells to grow replacement parts for organ transplantation: new livers, kidneys, skin, even pancreatic islet cells to help cure diabetes” (4). A person with Parkinson’s disease which had a damaged brain tissue could be resolved by taking the patients nucleus and fusing it with an egg. The embryonic stem cell would grow in to brain tissue which would replace the patients damaged brain cells. Therapeutic cloning enables the tissue to be genetically identical to the patients damaged cell. Normal transplants normally reject tissues and the body rejects the donated cell because it treats them as foreign. This leads to patients taking anti-rejection drugs. The major benefit of therapeutic cloning is that the patient would not need to take drugs as they would recognise the cell as their own. This is done by therapeutic cloning producing an exact match tissue as it has the patients original DNA.Never the less on some extraordinary moments the stem cells have mutated from which cause new form of genes to arise from changes in existing genes. This would lead to the patient to not have a similar tissue or an organ to the damaged one. This would lead the patient’s body to reject the mutated organ.
Therapeutic cloning makes sure that a patient does not need to rely and wait for a donor. This reduces the persons stress and in comfort. The organ’s DNA that would be transplanted in to the sick person would have a DNA that would match the sick person’s damaged DNA organ. This would lead the patient’s body not to reject the transplant and treat as if it was its own. But in order this to happen stem cells are removed from the pre embryo and cause the embryo to die. So the question being asked is embryo living specie? If yes then theoretical cloning would be murdering harmless species. “By destroying the embryo at fourteen days old they say, researchers are killing a potential individual” (2).
Therapeutic cloning also reduces stress and in comfort by allowing any donor volunteers to experience any pain anymore. The organs produced by theoretical cloning are new as where organs from which have been donated maybe old and may not respond and function as a brand new one. But on the other hand therapeutic cloning causes some side effects and there is a possible chance stem cells can spread a disease.
Theoretical cloning can be very precious and valuable to patients because it can save lives for people who have been waiting for an organ that did not come in time. For example theoretical cloning can be precious and valuable by a leukaemia patient desperately waiting for a bone marrow donor. But however doctors can produce a perfectly matched bone marrow by using the sick person’s skin cells. Therapeutic cloning is also used to save a high number of lives and increase the health and quality of lives of many humans. It would save lives as humans suffering Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer’s disease and heart failure. “It is hoped that the cells can be used to replace ones that have failed in patients with degenerative diseases, such as Parkinson's” (3). This would be achievable as therapeutic cloning will produce a healthy copy of a sick person’s tissue or organ for transplant.
To answer the question if therapeutic cloning will be available as a therapy from your GP? These questions need to be answered such as will the doctors and scientists solve the ethical problems such as murdering an embryo or finding a way for availability of eggs? Will they learn to prevent stem cells being mutated and inherited diseases? Therapeutic cloning can save countless number of lives and can cure some certain diseases and disorders that cannot be effectively handled today. After all these advantages of theoretical cloning would the anti-therapeutic cloning groups allow doctors to carry out therapeutic cloning as a therapy? Would they change their minds as if they were to think they would be saving lives as well as they would be murdering species? I have considered and looked if whether or not the advantages out weigh the disadvantages. Clearly the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. In my opinion cloning should be available as a therapy from your GP. Just the way the embryologist “cloned the first mammal….called dolly the sheep” (5), they should comb their knowledge and acknowledge a safer way of cloning to keep anti-therapeutic cloning groups happy and most of all to treat the sick people who are in need.
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1213
BIBLIOGRAPHY
(1) Biological science review FEB 2006 page1
(2) Sally Morgan-cloning-science at the edge page44
3) (title cloning embryos: Your Views BBC: news)
4) (ethical problems)
5) biologist volume 52 number 5 October 2005
