Researchers at the Oregon Regional Primate Research Center, using a different procedure from the one that made Dolly, cloned Tetra, a rhesus monkey born in 1999. Researchers used embryo splitting, a technique that makes Tetra a clone of her sisters, rather than a clone of an adult mammal. Researchers fertilized an egg from a female monkey with the sperm of a male monkey to make and embryo. When the embryo divided into eight, researchers split it into four identical two-celled embryos. Each two-celled embryo was implanted into a surrogate mother. Only one embryo survived, and Tetra was born. Tetra is genetically different form her mother and father but is identical to the other three embryos if the had survived.
Animals engineered to carry genes from species other than their own can be made to produce a wide variety of proteins that could be sold as drugs, as will as other proteins, called enzymes, that could be used to speed up industrial chemical reactions. These genetically altered animals are typically used to produce human hormones or proteins in their milk. These materials can be separated from the milk and used to heal humans. Cloning would produce as many genetically altered animals as are needed. The alternative is to simply allow them to mate; this would produce many offspring that had lost the inserted human gene and thus would be unable to produce the medication (Edwords 41).
Researchers involved in cloning envision a number of other practical applications for their work, including the creation of genetically modified animals that could provide organs for human organ transplants: scientists are attempting to create transgenic animals which have human genes. Their heart, liver or kidneys might be usable as organ transplants in humans. This would save many lives; thousands of people die each year awaiting available human organs. Once achieved transgenic animals could be cloned to produce as many organs as are needed. Also, through these experiments, experience is gained in cloning, and it may add to our understanding of genetics and help in the creation oth these transgenic animals, especially the perpetuation of those animals that are endangered or already extinct.
Some scientists believe that embryo cloning and related research is moral and might eventually lead to very positive results: It might allow many homosexual couples to have a child genetically similar to them. Just as women have long been able to have children without a make sexual partner, through artificial insemination, men could potentially become dads alone: replace the DNA from a donor egg with one’s own and then recruit a surrogate mother to carry the child. Some gay-rights advocates even argue that should sexual preference prove to have a biological basis, and should genetic screening lead to terminations of hay embryos, homosexuals would have an obligation to produce gay children though cloning. Lesbians would have the chance to give birth with no male involved at all; one woman could contribute the ovum, though other DNA. It might lead to an understanding of the mechanisms by which a morula (a mass of cells that has developed from a blastula attaches itself to the wall of the uterus.) This might generate new, effective contraceptives that exhibit very few side effects. The rapid growth of human morula is similar to the rate at which cancer cells propagate. Cancer researchers believe that if a method is found to stop the division of a human ovum, then a technique for terminating the growth of a cancer might be found (Bosch 1574).
Treatments for damage to the brain or nervous system might be possible due to cloning. Damaged nerve tissue in adults does not regenerate. However, stem cells might be capable of repairing the tissue. Because of the large number of stem cells required, human embryo cloning would be required. Much of nerve studies are related to Parkinson’s disease. Therapeutic cloning involves embryonic stem cells. These cells have not developed to have a specific function, so researchers can develop tailor made tissue to replace dead or diseased cells with new healthy cells (Bosh 1575). Parents who are known to be at risk of passing a genetic defect to a child could make use of cloning. A fertilized ovum could be cloned, and the duplicate tested for the disease or disorder. If the clone were free of genetic defects, then the other clone would be as will. The latter could be implanted in the woman and allowed to mature to term. For example, a number of disorders, including some affecting the eyes, brain, and muscles, are (at least partially) caused by flawed genes located in the mitochondria, energy-producing structures in the cytoplasm. If a woman were to carry a gene for one of these disorders, she could conceive a healthy child by having the nucleus of one of her body cells inserted into an enucleated egg cell from a woman who does not have anything wrong with her mitochondria genes. The embryo would then be implanted into the woman who donated the nucleus, and she would carry it full term (1578).
A well known fertility specialist, Panayiotis Zavos of the University of Kentucky, announced that he and Italian researcher Severino Antinori, the man who seven years ago almost helped a 62-year-old woman give birth using donor eggs, were forming a “consortium” to produce the first human clone. Given what researchers have learned since Dolly, no one thinks the mechanics of cloning are very hard: take a donor egg, suck out the nucleus, and hence the DNA, and fuse it with, say , a skin cell from the human being copied, then, with the help of an electrical current, the reconstituted cell should begin growing into a genetic duplicate. The consensus among biotechnology specialists is that within a few years, some scientists believe a few months, the news will break of the birth of the first human clone (Wise 623).
At the moment, the American public is plainly not ready to move quickly on cloning. In a Time/CNN poll, 90% of respondents thought it is a bad idea to clone human beings; Cloning right now looks like it’s coming to us on a magic carpet, piloted by a cult leader, sold to whoever can afford it. This idea makes people scared, and it seems so overwhelming. This helps explain why so much of the research is being done secretly. We may learn of the first human clone months even years after he or she is born, if the event has not happened already, as some scientists speculate. The team that cloned Dolly waited until she was seven months old to announce her existence. Creating her took 277 tries, and right up until her birth, scientists around the world were saying that cloning a mammal from an adult cell was impossible.
Of course, attitudes often change over time. In-vitro fertilization was effectively illegal in many states 20 years ago, and the idea of transplanting a heart was once considered horrifying. Public opinion on cloning will evolve just as I did on these issues, advocates predict. But in the meantime, the crusaders are mostly driven underground. In fact the risks involved with cloning mammals are so great that Wilmut, the premier cloner, calls it “criminally irresponsible’ for scientists to be experimenting on humans today. Even after four years of practice with animal cloning, the failure rate is still overwhelming: 98% of embryos never implant or die off during gestation or soon after birth. Animals that survive can be nearly twice as big at birth as is normal, or have extra-large organs or heart trouble or poor immune systems. Dolly’s “mother” was six years old when she was cloned. That may explain why Dolly’s cells show signs of being older than they actually are, scientists joked that she was really a sheep in lamb’s clothing. This deviation raises the possibility that being created by cloning adults will age abnormally fast (Wilmut 15).
There are serious ethical issues involved with the potential cloning of humans. But the real ethical issue does not involve the creation of human life but what we do with that creation. The ethical issue does not involve the cloning process; it involves what occurs after the cloning process. Obviously a person who cloned and then trained an army of human drones would be acting unethically. However, simply creating another human being through the cloning process does not present an ethical or moral dilemma, assuming that the cloning process produces no abnormalities, but human cloning is not apt to happen soon , if ever. Why not? There is no need to clone humans to provide answers to the questions that are central to research. Human cloning would relate primarily to producing more people. Reproduction by cloning is an inappropriate means to reproduce more mice, monkeys, sheep, or humans because species survive through genetic heterogeneity. Sexual reproduction ensures diversity, where as, in contrast, cloning, asexual reproduction, promotes sameness among individuals. Most of us treasure uniqueness, especially among family and friends, and survival of species (Miller 145).
Thus cloning, although a useful tool for experimental biologists is not an appropriate means of reproduction. Efforts to clone humans are not mainstream in the studies of biological research mainly because attempts would be costly and difficult. Human cloning, however, does present a challenge and some people respond to technical challenges. Therefore, it will not be surprising if scientists’ actually attempt to clone a human. But he or she will add little or nothing to the welfare of humans by cloning an individual.