Up until now genetic engineering and cloning has been used to clone plants, unicellular organisms, amphibians and simple mammals. This has led to significant advances in agriculture, industry, and medicine. Newer techniques in genetic engineering have enabled scientists to clone more complex mammals and opened up the possibility of cloning humans. Although there are many potential benefits to this technology, the prospect of cloning humans has raised many practical, ethical and religious dilemmas that are currently being debated by society.
The purposes of doing genetic engineering are many and various.
Ranges of them are listed below.
To repair a genetic "defect" (as with the current early trials of gene therapy in humans), to enhance an effect already natural to that organism (e.g. to increase its growth rate), to increase resistance to disease or external damage (e.g. crops - blight, cold or drought), e.g. getting a micro-organism to produce human insulin for diabetics, or a sheep to produce a human blood-clotting protein in her milk, in both cases a transgenic method.
The word cloning has caused the most uproar and raised the argument and controversy, into if people can play God.
Before discussing this I want to mention the advantages and disadvantages of human cloning.
This is called embryo transplanting. To do this the scientist would split up the embryo before the cells became specifically designed for a job. The split up embryo cells would then be put in to a female of the species where the 4 embryos can now grow. These are called clones
Advantages
An advantage of cloning is that the offspring is totally predictable; it is guaranteed to have the characteristics that of the parents. Scientists believe that they may be able to treat heart attack patients by cloning their healthy heart cells and injecting them into the areas of the heart that have been damaged.
Another advantage, which is only a theory, is that skin cells could be grown for burn victims so that they could replace burnt skin. They believe they could grow brain cells for the brain damaged and grow spinal cells for the paralysed. Obviously if this were to happen then this would be a huge advantage.
They also believe they could grow important organs such as livers, kidneys, lungs and even hearts. This would benefit us as a race hugely if this were to happen
A major bonus for infertile couples is that they would be able to have children through cloning.
We could also clone bone marrow cells for people with leukaemia. This is again an obviously huge advantage. It would mean several diseases such as Alzheimer's could also be cured using this method, but this is only a theory
Disadvantages.
A very strong argument against cloning is that we are interfering with nature and anything could go wrong. (Playing God) Which leads me on to my next point. We are not certain of the side effects of cloning humans. If a human were cloned it would be identical to someone else in the world and so would not be unique. Clones that are produced may be seen as a lower class as they are not "real". They may be thought of as a copy and so can be treated badly although they have feelings like anyone else. Clones maybe bought and sold on the "black market" as slaves, or they maybe illegally produced to do specific jobs.
Conclusions
The creation of humankind in God's image means that every individual has an absolute value in God's sight, which is independent of variations in their genetic heritage. Christians persistently need to draw attention to this fact. GE can make a significant contribution to the prevention and cure of human disease, and to the feeding of a hungry world. If used wisely it can function as yet another signpost pointing forward to the day when God will bring about creation's complete redemption. But, like other human attempts to improve health care and nutrition, the applications of GE, important as they may be, will never represent more than a patching-up operation, and are certainly no panacea for all ills.