Write A Persuasive Essay On Therapeutic Cloning

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Imagine waking up one morning with severe pain in your chest, resulting in an ER visit because the pain is unbearable. The results from your doctor explains that you have a heart condition that requires you to get a heart transplant in the next three months, or heart failure will occur. Two and half months have passed, you are laying there, IV in hand, and the hum of machines around you, as you watch your health slowly slip away in front of your eyes, as that dreaded three month mark approaches. This same situation happens on a daily basis to many ill people around the world. The sick are given a number of days or months they have left and placed on the waiting list. Although many religious and conservation organizations find therapeutic cloning unacceptable and unethical, the process can be very rewarding for curing diseases that are otherwise untreatable. Every ten minutes another name is added to the national organ transplant list (“Statistics”). Therapeutic cloning uses embryonic stem cells, which have two important properties: the ability to self re-new (or replicate) and able to differentiate into any type of tissue cell. Stem cells are taken from an embryo and manipulated to form into any type of tissue that eventually can make a full organ. The process starts out by removing an embryo from a woman and then the stem cells are removed from the embryo (“How It Is Done”). Once the stem cells are removed, they are fused with the cells of the tissue of choice (i.e. nerve cells, skin cells, etc.). The new stem cell is then put into the patient to replace the dying tissue, in hopes of forming a healthy functioning organ with the tissue that is still healthy (Fadel). With that process, some religious people consider the removal of the embryo as killing a human being that has full moral status. This has led to therapeutic cloning funding to be non-existent from the government. The Dickey-Wicker law states that somatic-cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), which creates a new embryo, cannot be funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) through the government. Researchers agree that therapeutic cloning is sure to need significant federal support to get anywhere close to reliable for patient use. However, the opposition argues that therapeutic cloning should not be funded because they claim that if the federal law granted …show more content…
Christopher Barratt, in the article “Clinical Challenges in Providing Embryos for Stem-cell Initiatives,” suggests that researchers could use women that are willing to donate eggs that could be fertilized and normally have ovarian stimulation and egg recovery. His thinking is, the women that already participate in egg-sharing, where recipients get the eggs, would possibly consider donating them to research instead. Barratt says “…to donate, the decision rests solely with the donors” (Barratt). The researchers then gave the decision to the donor to donate towards research, instead of egg-sharing for a recipient. The argument that Barratt makes is that the donors are also individuals that hold full moral status over what is their, allowing them to make the decision. This should then not be considered killing an embryo. If women have the right to make the decision based on abortion or not, they should have the decision to donate to a favorable

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