Cloning Technology new life creating progress

[DeveloperX 0]

Maybe anyone not understand the "Cloning Technology". I found this full article at http://www.brainia.com/ for all:

 

Cloning can be a very sensitive subject. It seems that it?s a battle between science and ethics. Does the ladder outweigh the former or vice versa? Maybe a few definitions will shed some light on the subject. ?Cloning is to create a genetic duplicate of an individual organism through asexual reproduction, as by stimulating a single cell? (Webster?s 211). ?Parthenogenesis is reproduction of organisms without conjunction of gametes of opposite sexes.? (Webster?s 800). Cloning has its medical uses, but do the ethical implications outweigh the advantages? The goal of genetic engineering is that every child be born strong, healthy, and well suited to make its way to the world. If genetic engineering would be used in this way the world would probably be a place of less disease. Sure it may be unethical to do some tests on humans, but without them medical progress would come to a halt. Cloning might also directly offer a way of curing diseases or a technique that could extend means to acquiring new data for the sciences of embryology and how organisms develop as a whole over time. Science has been trying for years to come up with cures for genetic diseases and so far haven?t really come up with anything that is truly helpful. On the other hand, with the technology of genetic engineering scientists may finally be able to start to understand the causes of diseases and to develop possible treatments and even prevention. For instance, the most studied disease is Cystic Fibrosis. Although, we have not found a cure yet, science ! might be getting close to coming up with a way of preventing Cystic Fibrosis. Science has made some major discoveries in the past forty years. In the 1960?s two French scientists by the names of Jacques Monod and Francois Jacob showed that genes can be turned on and off by what are called regulator genes. If it were possible to manipulate the regulator genes, than it would be possible to turn Cancer cells off and prevent it. It is expected that 185,000 people will be diagnosed with a brain tumor alone in 2000. That?s just brain Cancer, imagine how many lives would be saved if all Cancer cells could be turned off. Cloning isn?t just an advantage to the medical field. It would provide a link for a replacement to artificial insemination. Couples, who are unable to have children, or have genetic disorders, could use cloning to produce a child. Plus, women who are single could have a child using cloning instead of artificial insemination.

Natural cloning occurs too. All plants, some insects, algae, unicellular organisms that conduct mitosis or binary fissions, and identical twins are all clones of each other. As long as genetic make-up is the same they are clones, and a splitting embryo that creates two identical embryos produces twins. The difference between twins and clones, however, is that twins are new in genetic variation and unique from anything that came before them. Even if clones don?t have genetic variation they would closely resemble identical twins and more than likely would be accepted by the world as twins would. After all, there are some eight million identical twins alive today, so it is safe to say that about eight million ?human clones? are alive today. Plus, who is to differentiate between a clone and an identical twin? The world isn?t going to be able to distinguish between the two anyway.

 

Cloning is going to continue to be the subject of books, television shows, and movies. It has already been featured numerous times on the Discovery Channel and TLC. Dolly, the cloned sheep, was featured on the news for about four weeks. It is easy to get carried away and start thinking about what cloning will do to our future. However, it?s better to stop fantasizing about how human clones are going to take over the job market, but to look at what cloning has already done.

 

Thus far only the advantages of cloning have been described. It is only fair to know that cloning possesses some bad aspects as well. In case one didn?t know already genes are the basic units of inheritance. They are what make a plant, an animal, or a human being resemble its parents. Clones are carbon copies. They have the genetic information of only one parent. There is no mixing of genes with the chance of change. Therefore, clones would be deprived of a feeling of individuality and uniqueness. At least with natural reproduction genetic variation occurs and makes every person an individual. Without genetic variation everyone would be exactly the same and the world would be boring.

 

Not only will it erase individuality, which is almost bad enough in it, but also it will also eliminate the ?bad genes? and lead to dangerous narrowing of diversity in the gene pool. What does that mean? It means that if everyone is cloned over and over again off the same genes, there is a bigger chance of a mutated gene being prominent and then there would be no way to get rid of it. This is the main reason that science is reluctant to clone humans. So, what happens when we decline genetic diversity and the gene pool and we lose the ability to clone? Well, that?s simple we resort to a little process known as inbreeding. Inbreeding also increases the chance of transmitting mutated genes. In fact, zoologists and environmentalists trying to save endangered species are not having problems keeping population numbers up, but finding animals to breed that are not cousins.

 

Most scientists believe that cloning would create deformed or otherwise defective babies. For instance, some of the lambs produced by cloning before Dolly were larger than normal. It is very likely that defects would arise indeed for no other reason than the fact that the ability isn?t good enough to clone humans. ?The nucleus of a skin cell could have accumulated many genetic mistakes of no consequence to its role in the skin, but when asked to make a brand new organism these could prove deleterious in other tissues, or greatly increase the probability of developing cancer? (Beddington np).

 

Now that the advantages and disadvantages have been expressed the author feels that an example of the processes of cloning would be appropriate. The first example is the cloning of a frog.

 

1. The nucleus is removed from a frog egg. It is now called an enucleated egg. 2. A section of intestine is taken from a tadpole.

 

3. A cell from that intestinal tissue is taken and its nucleus removed. 4. The nucleus from the tadpole cell is put into the enucleated frog egg. 5. The egg, with its new nucleus, begins to divide and develop into a tadpole and then an adult frog. The frog?s genes are exactly like those of the tadpole because its instructions came only from the nucleus of the tadpole. The frog is a clone.

 

The next example of how cloning may be used is a cow embryo being shipped in the uterus of a rabbit.

 

1. Eggs are taken from a cow.

 

2. They are fertilized in a laboratory dish and begin to grow in the nutrient solution.

 

3. When they reach the hollow ball or blastula stage, each embryo is placed in a rabbit uterus.

 

4. The rabbit is shipped to another country...

 

5...and the embryo taken from the rabbit and replaced in the uterus of a cow. Thus far, the paper has listed the medical uses and ethical implications for cloning. Plus, an added bonus of processes in which cloning has been successful. Now, most people probably already have strong opinions about cloning and maybe this paper gave readers something on which to base their opinions. The goal of this paper wasn?t to convince the reader of cloning being advantageous or not, but instead to help people realize that the world is in store for some major technological advances and everyone must be prepared to deal with controversial issues such as the one presented above. If one is not able to deal with change then technology is just going to leave them behind. Like it or not technology is not going to stop progressing, so the world is going to have to learn to accept what is happening.

 

 

Technology of Cloning

http://robby.nstemp.com/photo2.html

 

Nuclear transfer involves transferring the nucleus from a diploid cell ( containing 30-40,000 genes and a full set of paired chromosomes) to an unfertilised egg cell from which the maternal nucleus has been removed. The technique involves several steps (see diagram below). The nucleus itself can be transferred or the intact cell can be injected into the oocyte. In the latter case, the oocyte and donor cell are normally fused and the 'reconstructed embryo' activated by a short electrical pulse. In sheep, the embryos are then cultured for 5-6 days and those that appear to be developing normally ( usually about 10%) are implanted into foster mothers.

 

Nuclear transfer is not a new technique. It was first used in 1952 to study early development in frogs and in the 1980's the technique was used to clone cattle and sheep using cells taken directly from early embryos. In 1995, Ian Wilmut, Keith Campbell and colleagues created live lambs- Megan and Morag - from embryo derived cells that had been cultured in the laboratory for several weeks. This was the first time live animals had been derived from cultured cells and their success opened up the possibility of introducing much more precise genetic modifications into farm animals.

 

In 1996, Roslin Institute and collaborators PPL Therapeutics created Dolly, the first animal cloned from a cell taken from an adult animal. The announcement of her birth in February 1997 started the current fascination in all things cloned. Until then, almost all biologists thought that the cells in our bodies were fixed in their roles: the creation of Dolly from a mammary gland cell of a six year old sheep showed this was not the case and the achievement was voted Science Breakthrough of the Year at the end of 1997.

 

It's very high scientific technology. It's future of Earth...

[Sam2698 0]

hey thanx for the article this has helped me complete the assignment due tommorow. Anyway there has been a lot of debates regarding ethical and religious concerns.

the religious arguments are basically based on scriptures and faith, and each religion has a different attitude towards the issue. but ethical arguments are more enforced by culture rather than religion

 

but we should also know some facts such as

There is no consensus on the morality of human cloning, even within particular religious traditions.

It took the scientists who created Dolly 277 tries before they got a healthy, viable lamb. Because cloning humans is more complicated, "even more deaths and lethal birth defects can be expected during experimentation" (Fox, Technology).

At the current time the risks associated with the cloning of humans are so great that "virtually all people agree that the current risks of physicals harm to children associated with somatic cell nuclear transplantation cloning might justify a prohibition at this time on such experimentation"

even though we know the good things and the bad things about cloning in the end cloning will probably to my guess be taken place to create armies or a stronger workforce but it will definately in no way as described by the author make the world boring that is just dumb, oh yeah and by the way I read in an article that there are mutants and cloned humans that are already born. Edited March 6, 2006 by Sam2698 (see edit history)

[tuddy 0]

What is the world coming to if we have to keep cloning stuff?, Dont we have better things like solving a cure for cancer to spend how money. This is just another way for people to have a big debate of the ethics of this so on etc.Now people look into how this technology is used, and done. But who looks into the billions of your tax money is used for something stupid like this, when cancer reserach gets crap all. I think prespective needs to come about.

[PeaceofMind 0]

um...thats just some scary sheep. Think about if we do that to lambs what about humans? That is too dangerous. They will for sure rebel if they are smart enough. Think about its I,Robot in real life.

[anwiii 17]

Maybe anyone not understand the "Cloning Technology". I found this full article at http://www.brainia.com/ for all:

 

Technology of Cloning

http://robby.nstemp.com/photo2.html

It's very high scientific technology. It's future of Earth...

 

i only have 4 words..... "a brave new world" THAT was the future earth. it's here now. don't fool yourself. the u.s. government want to say it's illegal to clone but what's interesting is what the government DOESN'T tell you.

 

cloning goes against my every belief in who we are and our very souls. i firmly believe that our bodies are hosts as our souls live on with each lifetime learning experience. don't tamper with nature and don't underestimate it or it just may come back and bite ya on the **bottom**. technology growing bigger just because it can or to support an over population in the short run will be the same technology that will kill us all in the long run.

 

what makes the world exciting and fun is that we are all different and unique. we all have something different and unique to offer ourselves, others, and the world til the day we die. if we were all the same by cloning, what a boring world and way of life it would be.

[Plenoptic 0]

I have read about that already in my biology text book. In fact it was just last week. It had the same diagram...well almost. Scientists have been studying this for years and I think they have the whole thing down. It is really just moral issues that could cause cloning not to happen. People thing it is sort of wrong. You don't really hear too much from whether they are making progress anymore. Most of the time it is because they don't want to be criticized if they fail. I am certainly all for cloning sort of. It would be cool but if we clone too much genes will start to disappear which could be deadly for future generations.

[dark_drgn 0]

Unless that person doesn't have really good genes, I don't see a problem, unless of course some super bacteria is formed and it kills everyone with the cloned gene, then we would have a major problem on our hands. And yes, like a lot of people have stated before, the main problem with cloning would be the ethics factor. If that hurdle is cleared, I don?t doubt that we would overcome the technological hurdle very quickly.

[amhso 0]

i think cloning is very immoral. It's not fair to those who can't afford it, and you're duplicating yourself. although it is argued that if you raise the clone in different conditions it will be different, it's still seemingly removing individuality. what if we have more clones than original people one day?

[savge17 0]

To me, there will always be some drawback or sideaffect for doing this. It can never go right. Just like medicine, there are sideaffects and you cant avoid them. Thats why I dont think that cloning will work to a human scale, but who knows it probably will in the near future.

[heavensounds 0]

Well I think that this so called CLONING is just another step to distruction of our civilization...this is not so interesting, because each and every civilization till now found a way to destroy itself and ours certainly wont be an exception..At first we must know, that cloning is a simulated effect of sex..so what do we do?????WE CREATE LIFE!! ANd when we do that, it is the same as a new person was born, it is a totally different ego eventhough he might look the same as someone else...WE SHOULDN'T TREAT him AS it!!! IT is a person for christ sake & scientists would just kill him for someone elses body parts - oh come on...Well I think this is not a question of moral as it is a question of COMMON SENSE! And the same thing goes for killing children or should i say abortions...A baby shouldnt be removed (killed) when it is 3 weeks old or something like that - what happens at that moment??? YOu know what? Some doctor said that if a baby is 2 weeks 23 hours and 59 seconds old than he can be killed, but after a few seconds this is not O.K. !??!?! CAN YOU SEE WHAT IS WRONG WITH THAT??? SOmeone decided what is a murder and what is abortion - life starts at the beginning, because without life in it, there is NO thing that would grow by its self...Well it is hopeless, but maybe someone will think about it...greetz

[ebula 0]

Well I think that this so called CLONING is just another step to distruction of our civilization...this is not so interesting, because each and every civilization till now found a way to destroy itself and ours certainly wont be an exception..At first we must know, that cloning is a simulated effect of sex..so what do we do?????
WE CREATE LIFE!! ANd when we do that, it is the same as a new person was born, it is a totally different ego eventhough he might look the same as someone else...WE SHOULDN'T TREAT him AS it!!! IT is a person for christ sake & scientists would just kill him for someone elses body parts - oh come on...

Well I think this is not a question of moral as it is a question of COMMON SENSE!

And the same thing goes for killing children or should i say abortions...A baby shouldnt be removed (killed) when it is 3 weeks old or something like that - what happens at that moment???

YOu know what? Some doctor said that if a baby is 2 weeks 23 hours and 59 seconds old than he can be killed, but after a few seconds this is not O.K. !??!?! CAN YOU SEE WHAT IS WRONG WITH THAT??? SOmeone decided what is a murder and what is abortion - life starts at the beginning, because without life in it, there is NO thing that would grow by its self...

Well it is hopeless, but maybe someone will think about it...

greetz

This isn't that cloning always means creation of a new individual. Cloning technology has got plenty of usefulness. Lets say an example..
A person's liver is damaged sevely due to cirrhosis. It can not be replaced without killing other healthy human. As everyone has only one liver in 'stock' nobody can donate it. What remains in option? Transplantation from other species like chimpanzee. This option is only temporary and the person will survive only for few days or months. His own immune system will start rejecting the transplanted organ saying it of foreign origin.

Who comes to rescue in this situation is cloning technology. A small healthy portion of cells from patient's
liver can be sliced away by operation and grown in laboratory condition. One of these cells can be fused with an egg from a donor and allowed to multiply quickly. The lump of cells can be quickly transformed into liver using stem cell and tissue culture techniques. (stem cell are capable of developing into any organ or tissue).
The liver grown in such way can be transplanted to patient. His body does not reject this piece of tissue, as it contains antigenic protein from his own body (although egg was from a different donor).
The patient will survive ultimately.
Now here comes the ethics part. Since the new organ is developed in-vitro or in laboratory condition, it can not be regarded as a life-form, even though its origin is an human egg. During menstrual cycle one egg dies every month. Instead of wasting it, it can be used to save one person's life. And as heavensounds said about foetus being killed during abortion and ethics committee doesn't seem to bother about it. It just shows partiality to the new and life saving technology.
The false concerns in general public about possible misuses of cloning, is baseless and remains miles ahead in future.
Even if Bill gates clones himself, He and His clone will die together in normal death, as telomere length
will be same for both individuals. So nobody will get benefitted eventually in such misdeeds.

We hould not worry about misuses of a technology much. Computers have been of so much use to humans. There is still fuss about possible taking global control by machines or computers. An't we are still using it?

[believer 0]

having watched the tv show Surface gives me this idea that cloning is really not that humane. I am a Catholic so still believe in the natural way of creative lives and that is by procreation. Still I would certainly respect other peoples stand on this.

[inyourarms 0]

I'm not really sure what the point of cloning is... I thought they didn't live as long like Dolly the sheep. I mean sure, it would help infertile couples but can't they just adopt? Wouldn't that be better?!

[ebula 0]

I'm not really sure what the point of cloning is... I thought they didn't live as long like Dolly the sheep. I mean sure, it would help infertile couples but can't they just adopt? Wouldn't that be better?!

Yep. Its true that clones have same natural age. Chromosome has its ends called telomere. The length of it reduces everytime a cell divides. This is because of a kind of defect in cell replication mechanism. Most of the healthy cells can overcome this defect by invoking a repair mechanism, but as and when human age progresses, the repair mechanism fails and telomere length becomes shortr and shorter. Eventually it leads to what called ageing.
Since clone is derived from same donor, the telomere length in father and clone remains same. Therefore, under normal or usual death sequence, theoritically father and clone should die simultaneously.
I wanted to convey this fact in earlier post, but it was llittle more scientific.

[grnjd 0]

I don't know if we should be creating life. I'm fine with people creating animals and stuff. But do we really want people creating people? I mean that can be more problems then needed. And think of all the religious things you have to think about. God created men, men shouldn't be able other men.