The past Century has seen the growth of scientific and technological research into cloning. In 1997 we were hit in the media by the story of Dolly the sheep. Dolly was the first successful cloning of a mammal. This cloning technique is that of 'reproductive cloning'. Many people think of cloning as being only this, creating an exact copy of another existing animal or organism with the exact same DNA. however, this picture has been painted mainly by the media who generally only focus on this one aspect of the field. There are in fact two other types of cloning which include: recombinant DNA technology or DNA cloning and therapeutic cloning.
Recombinant DNA technology or
This process of cloning is "the transfer of a DNA fragment of interest from one organism to a self-replicating genetic element such as a bacterial plasmid." This process is used in fields concerning genes and can be used to try and cure various genetic conditions. This is one aspect of cloning technology which i agree with and feel would bring great benefits to society and in particular people who may suffer from genetic conditions. Technology which potentially saves lives, is a good thing in my eyes. The process however, is also used in the production of genetically modified foods. This area of cloning i am still very dubious about. Why would we want to modify crops and foods which we have eaten for thousands of years? clearly so far they have done us anything but harm. In this instance i see it as a technology of greed! large corporations see the benefit of yielding larger crops etc from the same area of space as previous. They may be 'safe', but I am still very pessimistic about the long term effects of eating GM foods.
Therapeutic cloning
This process of cloning involves " the production of human embryos for use in research. The goal of this process is not to create cloned human beings, but rather to harvest stem cells that can be used to study human development and to treat disease." In recent years, this process has been developed to help heart disease. Scientists have found that by using somebodys own stem cells from their bone marrow, could treat heart disease. Tests have already been caried out and said to be successful. Again this is where the technology is of real benefit to humans, if it means bettering, curing or prolonging someones life.
It is reproductive cloning such as that with Dolly the sheep, which worries many people, myself included. The natural progression for scientists is to carry out human cloning (creating exact replicas from somebodies DNA) One of the issues this raises is that of who actually has the right or power to decide on whether the process is of benefit to society. The example of Dolly the sheep was by no means a complete success. What we forget is that Dolly was created after 276 attempts. Once created she survived roughly six years less than the average for that breed of sheep. One issue which became apparent was that Dolly may have in fact inherited her donor siblings age. This means that at birth she may in fact have been 6 years old already. She did successfully breed through natural methods, but it still remains to be seen whether even her offspring may have inherited Dollys age.
Overall, the process has been no where near perfected. There is still much to be perfected. However, even if perfected i still disagree with the cloning of human beings. The technology is fantastic hfor helping cure illnesses and genetic conditions or for even helping endangered species of animal etc, but to take it to the level of actually cloning another human would be too far! Having said this I still believe that there will come a day when cloning humans will be permitted, and just like the phenomenon of plastic surgery will become the 'norm' over time.
