Ethical Issue Essay Unit 1

Ethical Issue Essay...Unit 1
What is cloning? Cloning is the a possibility that was first raised when Scottish scientists created the sheep, Dolly, in 1997. There are three different types of cloning. The first is called recombinant DNA technology. This is when scientists transfer a DNA fragment of interest to bacterial plasmid. Plasmids carry up to 20,000 bb of foreign DNA. The second type of cloning is known as reproductive cloning. This is when scientists are able to generate an animal with the same nuclear DNA as a current or previously existing animal. An animal created this way is not really an identical clone of the donor animal, as is the popular belief. The only part that is identical to the donor animal is the chromosomal or nuclear DNA in the clone. Last is therapeutic cloning. This is the production of human embryos to harvest stem cells to study human development and treat disease.
Scientists feel that they are making a major breakthrough, particularly in medicine with all of their advances in genetic engineering. There are several benefits to each of the different types of cloning. Recombinant DNA technology is beneficial because it is important to learn about other related technology. Reproductive cloning is used to develop ways to reproduce animals with special or unique qualities to be used for certain purposes and also to repopulate animal species that are endangered. Therapeutic cloning can be used to produce whole organs from single cells or even to produce healthy cells where disease has affected the body.
However, there are many risks to all forms of genetic cloning. Reproductive cloning only has a ten percent success rate. Even the ten percent of cloned animals that are successful tend to have a much higher rate of disorders, disease, and mutations. The first time a an endangered wild animal was born was in 2001. It was a wild ox known as a gaur. It got an immediate infection and died only forty eight hours after it was born. The American Medical Association, or AMA, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science advise against reproductive cloning. They believe it is highly expensive and overall, ineffeficient. U.S. Congress is considering legislation to ban the process of reproductive cloning in our country. Greenpeace is also strongly against any form of genetic engineering. They state that genetically modified organisms can spread out and breed with natural organisms, thereby contaminating future generations.
Both sides of the debate about genetic engineering have valid points. It has both strengths and weaknesses, and who am I to say which outweighs the other.
I see the debate on cloning going on for many, many more years. I think that before it is accepted by mainstream community, much more research has to be done. The general public is not going to accept cloning when it is so expensive and has a ninety percent rate of failure... I think, however, that when scientists progress further with it, and improve technology, as is always happening, that it might become easier accepted.