Essay About First Successful Cloning Experiment And First Cloned Calves

Ethics
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Cloning, is it the thing of the future? Or is it a start of a new
generation? To some, cloning could give back a life. A life of fun, happiness,
and freedom. For others it could mean destruction, evil, or power. Throughout
this paper, you the reader, should get a better concept of cloning, its ethics,
the pros and cons, and the concerns it has brought up. You will hear the good
of what cloning can do and the bad that comes with the good. Most of the
information you will read about in this paper is what might become of the future.
Even though the cloning of humans can not be accomplished. When it is the
possibilities are endless.
What is cloning? How did it get started? Well, it is like this. A
clone is a genetic copy or a replica of an living organism. But, when you gear
cloning doesnt a Si-Fi movie come to mind. Like when they take a nucleus, place
it in a egg, put the egg in a incubator, and when it hatches its an exact
replica of the original being (Lawren). Though this has been done with frogs it
has not yet been accomplished with mammals (Lawren). Another way to make a
clone, as they do in the cattle buisness, is to split the cells of a early
multi-celled embryo which will form two new embryos (Lawren).
For it to get started into practice it took more than fifty years of
questioning and testing. The first successful cloning experiment involved a
leopard frog. It took place in, 1952 with group of scientist from the
Institute for Cancer Research in Philadelphia (Lawren). To clone the frog they
used an embryonic frog cell nucleus(Margery). 1962, John Gurdon of Cambridge
University cloned a toad that survive threw adulthood and was able to reproduce.
He was also the first to take a nucleus from a fully contrast tadpole intestinal
cell and cloned toads(Robertson). As you can see we are getting close to the
cloning of humans. 1981, Steen Willadsen was the first to clone a artificial
chimera. He did this by mixing a sheep and a goat getting the result of a “geep”
(Lawren). It had the body shape and the head of a goat, and a dappled coat
which had large patches of sheeps wool. 1984, Willadsen cloned the first
verifiable mammal, using embryonic nuclei transplant into an unfertilized sheep
egg. Also in, 1986, when he worked for Texas bioengineering company (Lawren).
By using the embryonic nuclei, he produces the first cloned calves from cattle.
The cloned cattle that were produced were super-elite, high production dairy
cows and bulls who had a high breeding rate (Robertson). 1987, James Robl of
the University of Massachusetts was the first to clone rabbits also using
embryonic nuclei. But who can say when we will be able to clone human organs or
complete “biocopies” of human beings by using just the nuclei taken from a skin
sample (Lawren).
Whats so good about cloning? Lets look at this at a different scenario.
Ned and Stacey are in a hospital. The both of them have a kidney that is
failing them. For Ned this is no big deal, since he has a clone. All the
doctor has to do is remove the cloned kidney and switch it with the bad one.
With this cloned kidney you dont need to worry about the body rejecting it
because it is made from the same DNA and the cells will react to it as if it was
the original one. On the other hand for Stacey she doesnt have a clone. So,
all she can do is pray for a donors kidney to arrive before she dies. Another
good thing is we could create farm or “pharm” animals genetically engineered to
produce valuable drugs (Resenberger). Like scientist are creating an animal
that will manufacture anti-clotting drugs for humans in their milk by gene-
spliced sheep and mice (Resenberger). With this breeders could make formerly
expensive drugs in large quanities at a low cost. Doesnt all of this sound
good to have? Or are we just overlooking the bad possibilities. Lets just say
some freak wants to make an army of one hundreds Adolf Hitlers. Or try to clone
Einstein. Also people could go out and buy a son that will grow up to be
Micheal Jordan or Mike Tyson. But in a way this is good for people who are
unable to have children. Some thought of the future is immortality. When you
make