Cloning of Animals and Humans
The birth of Dolly the sheep, the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell, caused extensive media and public interest and continuing debate. In the light of this debate it is necessary to clarify what the event actually implies. First, scientifically it shows that in mammals it is possible to re-set the genetic programming that occurs during development. Secondly, it facilitates the exact reproduction of valuable transgenic animals or of elite lines e.g. of cattle.The main ethical implications however – the ones that excited the public and the media – relate to possible applications in the reproduction of humans. Leaving aside the safety issues – which remain very significant – the strong consensus is that it would be unethical to deliberately create a child in someone else’s genetic image. However, the use of cloning to generate stem cells to treat certain degenerative diseases is a potential application that many find acceptable.
Cloned animals:
What are the risks of cloning?
When we hear of cloning successes, we learn about only the few attempts that worked. What we don’t see are the many, many cloning experiments that failed! And even in the successful clones, problems tend to arise later, during the animal’s development to adulthood.Cloning animals shows us what might happen if we try to clone humans. What have these animals taught us about the risks of cloning?Some scientists, however, say cloning animals can have a lot of benefits for humans.The question of human cloning is even more controversial. Perhaps a few people–the adventurous types!–would clone themselves.We need to be careful.Of course, this is a crazy idea because we do not know about the consequences of cloning experiments. I believe that cloning might have benefits for our society, and attempts to clone humans may help us to survive. But, who knows? Maybe new cloning techniques will create more problems than they will solve. Stability is the most important thing for most human beings, and many people want to ban cloning because they think it could be dangerous. The results could be unpredictable.We need to be careful. We don’t want to do it the wrong way and have to admit we made a mistake. There is no question that cloning experiments must be controlled.
Designing babies
A new form of cloning has been developed that is easier to carry out than the technique used to create Dolly the sheep, raising fears that it may one day be used on human embryos to produce “designer” babies. Scientists who used the procedure to create baby mice from the skin cells of adult animals have found it to be far more efficient than the Dolly technique, with fewer side effects, which makes it more acceptable for human use. The mice were made by inserting skin cells of an adult animal into early embryos produced by in-vitro fertilisation (IVF). Some of the resulting offspring were partial clones but some were full clones – just like Dolly.
Unlike the Dolly technique, however, the procedure is so simple and efficient that it has raised fears that it will be seized on by IVF doctors to help infertile couples who are eager to have their own biological children.
The experiments on mice demonstrated that it is now possible in principle to take a human skin cell, reprogramme it back to its embryonic state and then insert it into an early human embryo. The resulting child would share some of the genes of the person who supplied the skin tissue, as well as the genes of the embryo’s two parents. These offspring are chimeras – a genetic mix of two or more individuals – because some of their cells derive from the embryo and some from the skin cell. Technically, such a child would have three biological parents.
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