Cloning: medical breakthrough or a step to far?

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Cloning: medical breakthrough or a step to far?

 

In this day and age there are three types of cloning available these being:

Embryo cloning:

This is a medical treatment that produces two or more identical embryos. From a fertilised Embryo one of more cells are removed and then encouraged to grow into one or more duplicate Embryos. Thus identical embryos are produced with identical DNA structures.

Adult DNA Cloning:

Also known as ‘Cell Nuclear Replacement’ is the procedure used to clone Dolly the sheep. The process involves the DNA of an embryo being removed and then replaced by the DNA of an adult of the same species. This embryo is then implanted into a womb where it is left to develop fully.

Therapeutic Cloning:

This procedure starts off like ‘Adult DNA Cloning’ but instead of the embryo being left to develop fully, after 14 days its stem cells are removed form it. These stem cells are removed with the intent of inducing them to grow into tissues or whole organs for use in transplants back into the person who supplied the DNA. Stem cells are cells with no specific function at the stage of development. The embryo dies in this process. (Sources 1,2,3 and 5)

The question of whether cloning is ‘a medical breakthrough or a step to far’ is very open as the three methods have different aims when implemented.

Embryo cloning: can simply be described as the inducing of the natural process that creates identical (monozygotic) twins and so doesn’t actually alter the DNA of the embryos, but it does however replicate them. Attempts are being made to use this method of cloning successfully within the field of medicine. One way is that scientists are trying to create transgenic animals (mainly pigs) that have human genes and so can therefore develop organs that will be able to be transplanted into humans. The cloning process is used to make identical copies of the altered embryo’s that could then fully develop and produce animals with organs or tissues that could be harvested and used to save lives. If the embryos aren’t cloned in this way then the other way of producing transgenic animals is to let altered adults mate but then the offspring have a very low chance of also having the human genes. The process of continuing this cloning method, like all the other method would lead to a possible greater understanding of genetics. (Sources 5 and 6)

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Embryo cloning does have medical and social benefits when used on human embryos, but again like all the methods it also has many ethical concerns. The benefits are that the rate at which the cloned morula develops is similar to the rate at which cancers propagate; and so as it is easier to control embryo’s, experiments could be carried out possibly advancing the knowledge of cancers and leading to ways of stopping its growth. (Sources 5 and 6)

Due to the fact that from this method one embryo can be split into many, during in vitro ...

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