Drew Barth
Author's Note: This is a research paper on cloning. I will show what cloning is, how it works, and my opinion towards cloning.
What is Cloning?
According to
Human Genome Project more than 90% of cloning attempts fail. These
cloning projects cost a lot of money with little success. This little success
makes cloning a very controversial topic. Some people believe it is not humane
to perform cloning to animals and people. But others say this is a great
accomplishment to science. Even though
there can be upsides and down sides of cloning I think there are more downsides
so right now we shouldn’t be cloning.
First
to know why cloning is not the right decision at the moment is to figure out
what cloning is and how it is done.
There are three types of cloning Therapeutic, reproductive, and DNA
cloning. Reproductive cloning is the most used type of cloning. Reproductive cloning
is taking DNA from the donor to the
reproductive system of the receiver (Human
Genome Project Information ). They take this DNA from a nucleus from an
adult egg. From there they have to keep the egg preserved with chemicals until
it is ready for birth and it is given birth from the same genetic animal (What Is Cloning). The first animal to go
through this was a sheep named Dolly who was born in 1996 in Edinburgh Scotland (Humane Genome). The second type of cloning is
therapeutic Cloning it is when embryos are collected to harvest stem cells in
humans to help cure diseases (Fetzer).
Therapeutic cloning is not to clone animals but to help cure human dieses
through cloning stem cells, some day they hope to cure heart dieses. DNA
cloning is when you transfer a DNA fragment of importance into a different host
cell in the same animal breed.
Even though knowing
how cloning works is important, knowing the pros of cloning has the same
importance. The pros of cloning are the
dieses that could possibly be cured. With these advancements through stem cell
technology scientists hope that someday they will be able to cure some heart
conditions. Other positive things about
cloning are if your dog dies there is a service that will clone your old dog
for you but for a price. That does not mean the dog will have the same
personality and will be exactly the same.
Although knowing
the pros of cloning is important, knowing the cons has the same importance.
Some cons of cloning is how animals that get cloned have been known to die
early in their life with no explanation. Another con of cloning is the expenses
there are involved it takes 100,000 dollars to clone your dog which is a huge
cost. Also more than 90% of cloning attempts fail which is an awful statistic (Human Genome Project Information ).
Next
I will explain why cloning is not the best thing to do with our time and money.
Cloning takes a long time to get just right and the money to do this is crazy.
I don’t think we are at the point where stem cell technology is really getting
to the point to cure dieses.I think stem cells can be the next big thing in the
medical field but for right now we are not at the point where we have perfected
this technology. Maybe in a couple of
years there might be a breakout in cloning and it is cheap easy and everyone
can benefit from this. I think it is just too much money and time that goes
into cloning and you don’t get a lot of upsides to all of that money.
As you can see
Cloning is not worth all the spending and time. Although there are a lot of
upsides there are a lot of down sides of cloning. Cloning is hard to perfect and takes a long
time it simply is not worth all the time we put into it.
Bibliography
Fetzer, Scott. World Book. Chicago,
IL: World Book Inc., 2000.
Human Genome Project Information . 11 May 2009. 18 april 2012
<http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/cloning.shtml>.
"Humane Genome." 11 May 2009. Cloning
Fact Sheet. 16 April 2012 <http://www.genome.gov/25020028>.
What Is Cloning. 4 April 2012 <http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/tech/cloning/whatiscloning/>.
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