Cloning: The Future of Medicine
The first question most people ask doctors when they are told that they have a terminal disease is “How long do I have?” Once a person goes into hospice care the average survival is twenty-four days, but the average estimate doctors give their patients is around ninety days. Many people with terminal illness could be saved if the advances in organ cloning allow for cloning organs to be considered commonplace and, most importantly, legal.
Clones are produced through a process called Somatic Cell Nuclear Transplantation (SCNT). The controversy is not necessarily in the SCNT process, it is in what happens after the clone is produced. In reproductive cloning the clone is allowed to live, develop, and …show more content…
Although creating a cloned life is very controversial, scientists have been researching reproductive cloning and if it can actually be life sustaining, in the long run. Scientists have made hundreds of attempts to clone various animals. Despite the hundreds of attempts, only a handful of reproductive clones of mammals have been successful; however, there have not yet been any attempts to produce reproductive clones of humans.
The most successful and prominent reproductive clone is Dolly the sheep. Dolly was born on July 5th, 1996 at The Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburgh in Midlothian, Scotland, United Kingdom. The story of Dolly was known by people all over the world. Most reproductive clones had not been born as “normal” animals, instead they had been born with birth defects and genetic malfunctions. These malfunctions have made the life span of cloned animals generally extremely short, usually not living long after birth. Dolly was the exception to all expected …show more content…
Some scientists believe that life of an embryo begins at conception, while others believe that life begins after certain development occurs. In therapeutic cloning, the cell is killed approximately four to five after it is created. The purpose of therapeutic cloning is to produce stem cells that can heal a person with a disease or illness. The stem cells also allow scientist to test new drugs without that possible consequences of testing them on actual human or animals. Stem cells are currently the basis of most anticancer
The first question most people ask doctors when they are told that they have a terminal disease is “How long do I have?” Once a person goes into hospice care the average survival is twenty-four days, but the average estimate doctors give their patients is around ninety days. Many people with terminal illness could be saved if the advances in organ cloning allow for cloning organs to be considered commonplace and, most importantly, legal.
Clones are produced through a process called Somatic Cell Nuclear Transplantation (SCNT). The controversy is not necessarily in the SCNT process, it is in what happens after the clone is produced. In reproductive cloning the clone is allowed to live, develop, and …show more content…
Although creating a cloned life is very controversial, scientists have been researching reproductive cloning and if it can actually be life sustaining, in the long run. Scientists have made hundreds of attempts to clone various animals. Despite the hundreds of attempts, only a handful of reproductive clones of mammals have been successful; however, there have not yet been any attempts to produce reproductive clones of humans.
The most successful and prominent reproductive clone is Dolly the sheep. Dolly was born on July 5th, 1996 at The Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburgh in Midlothian, Scotland, United Kingdom. The story of Dolly was known by people all over the world. Most reproductive clones had not been born as “normal” animals, instead they had been born with birth defects and genetic malfunctions. These malfunctions have made the life span of cloned animals generally extremely short, usually not living long after birth. Dolly was the exception to all expected …show more content…
Some scientists believe that life of an embryo begins at conception, while others believe that life begins after certain development occurs. In therapeutic cloning, the cell is killed approximately four to five after it is created. The purpose of therapeutic cloning is to produce stem cells that can heal a person with a disease or illness. The stem cells also allow scientist to test new drugs without that possible consequences of testing them on actual human or animals. Stem cells are currently the basis of most anticancer