Cloning

Cloning

For many years, the cloning of adults, animals or humans has been mostly the object of science fiction, something unforeseen by man. However, "The world was shocked in February of 1997 when British scientist, named Ian Wilmot announced that his research team successfully cloned lamb named dolly from an adult sheep at the Roselyn Institute in Scotland".(1) For what seemed like a dream for many years quickly turned into reality. The newest and possibly the most controversial phenomena in curing human disease, a phenomenon better known as cloning, was born.

Through out the history of man, human disease has been considered a leading cause of death. Since antiquity, physicians explored assorted remedies in order to cure various maladies. Ancient physicians made enormous contributions to modern medicine. Even though, immaculate progress has been made in modern medicine, there are numerous cases of fatal diseases, for which modern medicine has no cure. Granted today's technological advancements, general practitioners are still using several of the ancient techniques and ideas in order to make progress in today's research and development. Scientists observe historical data and ideas in order to help generate new ones. A well known belief to man, the belief of reincarnation came from the ancient Egyptians who believed that there was life after death and preserved the body of their rulers through a process of mummification. This is a process of preservation that kept the original body and shape of the ruler for his/her return to earth. Although, this may seem a bit anomalous to the western man, contemporary technology brings this the idea of reincarnation or recreation to life, creating new ways to fight disease. Modern science takes the idea of human life and it's regeneration and brings it to life through the process of cloning. In 1938 a German scientist Hans Spemann proposes a "fantastical experiment" to transfer one cell's nucleus into an egg without a nucleus, the basic method that would eventually be used in cloning. Fourteen years later in 1952 Briggs and King clone tadpoles. Another scientist John Gurdon clones frogs from differentiated cells in 1962. In 1969 Shapiero and Beckwith isolate the first gene. By 1973 Cohen and Boyer create first recombinant DNA organisms. 1978, the release of David Rorvik's book, In His Image: The Cloning of a man sparks a worldwide debate on cloning ethics. 1984 Steen Willadsen, a Danish scientist, reports he has made a genetic copy of a lamb from early sheep embryo cells, a process now called "twinning." Other scientists will eventually use his method to "twin" cattle, pigs, goats, rabbits and rhesus monkeys. 1995 Ian Wilmut replicates First's experiment with differentiated cells from sheep, but puts embryo cells into an inactive state before transferring their nuclei to sheep eggs. The eggs develop into normal lambs. In February 1997 Wilmut and colleagues at the Roslin Institute in Scotland report they have cloned a 6-year-old adult sheep from an udder cell. They name the sheep Dolly (after Dolly Parton). It is the first clone created from an adult cell. (4)

Although, many believe cloning to be beneficial to mankind, just like with any new discovery cloning has become a widely debated controversial topic. In 1978 the release of David Rorvik's book, In His Image: The Cloning of a Man, sparks a worldwide debate on cloning ethics. (4) Many would argue that cloning has tremendous positive aspects and would only better our way of life. While other groups such as naturalists and religious followers, strongly disagree. Those who support cloning feel that cloning could bring our understanding of evolution and human past to a new heightened level of understanding. Cloning would also allow for organ transplant without a waiting list. "Therapeutic cloning [specific cloning technique] and embryonic stem cell research may represent the best hope for the hundreds of millions worldwide who suffer from Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, diabetes, ALS amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease, multiply sclerosis, stroke, spinal cord injury, and many other disease and disorders". (5) Cloning can benefit the economy by providing cheap meat for starving people or allow the production of plant life were cultivation is not possible.

However, others would argue that animal rights are violated when doing research and testing on animals. It took 277 attempts in order to successfully clone dolly the sheep. The idea of cloning brings about fear that animals and humans who are cloned may be owned, labeled, sold, and copyrighted, which humans consider to be inhumane. Cloning isn't exact and over generations the cloned animals may be filled with genetic flaws due to errors being exemplified through each cloning creating new disorders and complications. Religious groups may also argue that the cloning of humans goes against g-d, since human beings are not the creation of man. Cloning could also be used as a power during the time of war, allowing countries to create armies. Further more, if everyone would have the same genotype a fatal disease could wipe out the human race.

In order to have a better understanding of cloning it is important to understand that cloning has three different divisions: embryo cloning, adult DNA cloning, and therapeutic cloning. First, there is embryo cloning which is a medical technique that produces "monozygotic" (identical) twins or triplets. Nature itself is the greatest cloning agent. Embryo cloning might be more accurately called "artificial twinning" because it imitates the mechanism by which twins naturally develop. It involves removing one or more cells from an embryo and encouraging the cell to develop into a separate embryo with the same DNA as the original. It has been successfully carried out for years on many species of animals. Very limited experimentation has been done on human embryos. Each naturally cloned twin has a genetic structure identical to the other (in identical twins). In cloning, this same operation is done intentionally in a laboratory. Through cloning and knowledge of genetics, scientists can create transgenic animals (mostly pigs, whose natural genes are close to human genes) with human genes. Their organs might be usable to humans with little resistance from the immune system. Once produced, trance genetic animals can be cloned as much as needed to produce body organs. Recently scientist used embryo cloning to harvest spider silk out of a ship. They inserted the silk gene of a spider into an embryo of a sheep, in order to produce silk-protein containing milk. After separation from the milk, the silk protein can be used to manufacture bullet proof jackets for the police, army and other