To Clone, or Not to Clone?

5/12/2010
Jackson Switzer
 To Clone, or Not to Clone?

In the movie Star Wars, the Empire makes thousands of "clones" of

Jango Fett to make an army of "clone" troopers. Have you ever wondered
what a "clone" is? A clone is a genetically identical copy of another
organism. Sometimes cloning is mixed up with genetic engineering. They
are not the same thing. Cloning is creating a copy of an organism, while
genetic engineering involves modifying, taking away, or adding genes.

Cloning is very important; it happens in nature every day. Things like

garlic and yeast clone themselves to reproduce. This is natural cloning.
Another form of natural cloning is identical twins. One way of cloning,
called Artificial Embryo Twinning, actually copies the process of making
identical twins. First, a scientist takes an embryo, which is an unborn
human or animal that is just starting to develop. Then the scientist
manually splits the embryo (instead of it splitting naturally), then lets the
two parts divide and develop on their own.

History
One of the first cloned organisms was a sea urchin in 1885. Yes,
cloning has been around for that long. The headline in the newspaper was
"Seeing Double? Sea Urchins cloned!" The scientist who did it was Hans
Adolf Edward Dreisch. Dreisch showed in Sea Urchins that by simply
shaking a two celled embryo, the cells could be split, and then the cells
would grow into two genetically identical sea urchins.

Since then, there have been many more examples of cloning, like
salamanders (1902), frogs (1952), rabbits (1975), cows (1987), sheep
(1996), monkeys (1997), and mice (1998). Cloning is becoming a very big
part of science.

Of all clones, the most famous example is probably Dolly the Sheep.
She was born on July 5, 1996, making her the first mammal to be cloned
from an adult somatic cell. A somatic cell is any cell in a plant or animal that
is not a reproductive cell. An adult cell is from an adult organism, not an
embryo. So Dolly was the first mammal to be a clone from an adult cell that
wasn't reproductive.

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 To Clone, or Not to Clone?

Even though we have made many clones of animals, human cloning is

still fiction. There have been a few claims that someone has done it,
though. In 1998 some scientists in South Korea claimed to have cloned a
human embryo, but the experiment failed when the would-be clone was only
made of four cells. In 2002 a religious group called Clonaid claimed to have
made the first clone of a human, a girl named Eve. Despite their claims,
though, they never provided any real evidence for the existence of this
clone, or the 12 other clones they said they made.

Should it be done?
There have been many arguments over whether cloning is right.
Some say no, cloning is wrong. Others disagree.

After researching both sides of the argument, my opinion is we should

clone. Many people, especially a lot of politicians and religious leaders,
disagree and answer negatively, saying it would not be ethically or morally
right, and that it would be, in effect, "tampering in God's domain (Nardo,
2003).” Some people, who answer the question positively, say that it
shouldn’t be anyone else’s business if they want to be cloned. One man
said, “My decision to clone myself should not be the government’s business,
or Cardinal O’Connor’s, any more than a woman’s decision to have an
abortion. Cloning is hugely significant. It’s part of the reproductive rights of
every human being (Glenn, 2000).” I think this is partly wrong, though.
Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these
truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these
are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness (Jefferson, 1776)”. This
means that all men have certain rights that should not ever be forcefully
taken from them by a human, and three of those rights are life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness. If Thomas Jefferson is correct, and all men are
created equal, does that include clones? What if a doctor hasn’t perfected
cloning and a clone is born with all sorts of birth defects? Is that human
really “created equal” to all others? And do women really have the right to
abortion? What about all humans’ right to life? The baby that was aborted
was killed, and therefore denied that right to life!

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 To Clone, or Not to Clone?

One of the main arguments against cloning is because people say that
it denies individuals a singular identity. They say that humans have the
right to uniqueness, and cloning makes a copy of a human, so the cloned
human’s right would be violated. The counter argument says that if humans
do have that right, which they may not, cloning would not violate it. Clones
are the same person genetically and physically, but they are not the same
mentally. A clone would not have the same memory of the original, would
not have the same intelligence level, and would not have the same
personality. These things are not caused by genes, so they will not be
identical.

Two movies that were very influential are The Boys from Brazil and
Sleeper. In Sleeper, someone keeps a dead dictator’s nose intact for nearly
a year, and then tries to bring that dictator back to life. In The Boys from
Brazil a Nazi doctor creates 94 clones of Hitler out of cells Hitler donated
before death. There is a problem with something like these becoming a
reality, though. Creating 94 clones wouldn’t only take years; it would cost
billions of dollars. Because of this, it is unrealistic for people to be scared of
something like that happening.

Sometimes people are also scared of someone creating an army of

mindless clones. This is not possible. Clones are not robots, forced to do
what their creator says, but are human beings, with the same rights as non-
clones, and with separate minds and wills. So this is also unrealistic.

My final reason people would want to clone humans is to bring back

loved ones that have passed away. They could pay for a scientist to make a
clone of a dead family member or friend, and it could be done. But the
clone would not really be the same person as the original. As I said earlier,
it would not have the same intelligence, personality, or memory, so the
clone would be very different. But this doesn’t stop some people. They still
want to do it.

Plants
The argument isn’t just about cloning humans, either. Some people
argue against cloning animals, too, along with plants. Cloning plants can be,

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and usually is, a very good thing. All apples in some supermarkets are
roughly the same size, and shape, because they are clones. For example, all
modern apple trees that produce Cox’s Orange Pippin apples are clones of
one tree planted about 200 years ago. The only big problem with cloning
plants is if the original gets a disease, the clones are just as likely to get that
disease. Raju Kucherlapati, a genetics teacher at Harvard University, says,
“Genetically modified plants have had a significant impact on our food supply
and as the population of the world is growing it is important that we able to
feed them. Cloning technology is very critical for this effort.”

Animals
Animals are also somewhat of a big argument. Cloning animals can be
very good for agriculture. If a farmer has a cow that is very good for
milking or has very good meat, he could clone it and have a whole herd of
that same cow. Mr. Kucherlapati, speaking about cloning animals, says, “We
will understand much about animal and human development from these
studies and will also help with many medical issues.”

Cloning animals could help be very beneficial, too. Scientists could

clone an endangered animal, which could very well help get it removed from
the “endangered” list. This has actually (sort of) happened before, with the
European Mouflon, a very small wild sheep. It was cloned in 2001 and lived
for about seven months, which made it the first endangered mammal clone
to live longer than infancy.

Also, some people have said they want to clone dead pets. This could
be done in the near future, or even now with a bit of luck and experience.
But a drawback from cloning pets is that cloned animals are similar to
human clones: they aren’t exactly like the original. Like human clones, the
animal wouldn’t have the same memory, the same intelligence level, or the
same personality as the original pet.

Another reason for cloning animals is that, technically, you could bring
entire species back to life, if you had enough intact DNA from that animal.
This holds true for dinosaurs too, like in the well know movie Jurassic Park.
It might not be a good thing to have dinosaurs come back to life, though.

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 To Clone, or Not to Clone?

One of the main reasons people clone animals is to help fight off
disease. Scientists could genetically engineer an animal to fight diseases,
and then make a clone of that animal. They could also use the clones to
create drugs that help cure diseases in humans. I think this would save
lives, and be a very good thing to do.

My final reason for supporting cloning animals is for their organs. I

know it sounds a little bit weird, but it’s true. A scientist could genetically
engineer an animal so its organs would work in a human body. After
modifying the animal, the scientist would make clones of that animal, and
use the clones’ organs to transplant into humans. Right now scientist would
most likely use pigs, because they are around the same size and shape as
human organs. In my opinion, this sounds kind of unfair. I know that it
would save thousands of human lives, but it would also kill a lot of animals.

In conclusion, I think cloning can be good, and can be bad. In my opinion,

we should definitely continue cloning plants and animals, and cloning
humans should be limited to things that will not deny the clones or the
original their “certain unalienable rights”. Cloning can be great, for things
like human reproduction, food, endangered species, curing people, and
many other things, but can also be very bad, if done incorrectly. I hope that
in the near future, cloning will be used for good things, like reproduction, but
not too much.

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Works Cited
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Institute: http://www.genome.gov/25020028#al-8

Cloning. (2010, April 28). Retrieved April 14, 2010, from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloning

FDA. (2009, October 28). Consumer FAQs. Retrieved April 19, 2010, from U.S. Food and Drug
Administration: http://www.fda.gov/AnimalVeterinary/SafetyHealth/AnimalCloning/ucm055516.htm

Fox News. (2010, January 6). Many Expect Organ Cloning Could Be Routine by 2020. Retrieved April 16,
2010, from Fox News: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,582127,00.html

Glenn, M. (2000). The Human Cloning Debate. Albany: Berkeley Hills Books.

Human Genome Project. (2009, May 11). Cloning Fact Sheet. Retrieved April 15, 2010, from Human
Genome Project Information:
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/cloning.shtml

In Vivo. (2010, April 27). Retrieved April 16, 2010, from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_vivo

Index of Genetic Engineering Articles. (2010, April 14). Retrieved April 14, 15, 2010, from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_genetic_engineering_articles

Jefferson, T. (2005). The Declaration of Independence. In J. Hakim, A History of Us: From Colonies (p.
190). New York: Oxford University Press, Inc.

Martha Nussbaum, C. S. (1998). Clones and Clones. London: W.W. Norton & Company.

Molecular Cloning. (2010, April 20). Retrieved April 16, 2010, from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloned_DNA#Restriction.2Fligation_cloning

Nardo, D. (2003). Cloning. Farming Hills: The Gale Group.

Santa Monica College. (N/A, N/A N/A). Cloning. Retrieved April 15, 2010, from Santa Monica College:
http://library.smc.edu/new/research/topics/cloning.htm

The University of Utah. (2010, April 28). The Clone Zone. Retrieved April 15, 2010, from Learn.Genetics:
http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/tech/cloning/clonezone/

The University of Utah. (2010, April 28). What is Cloning? Retrieved April 16, 2010, from Learn.Genetics:
http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/tech/cloning/whatiscloning/

The University of Utah. (2010, April 28). Why Clone? Retrieved April 19, 2010, from Learn.Genetics:
http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/tech/cloning/whyclone/

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Trivedi, B. P. (2001, October 29). Scientists Clone First Endangered Species: a Wild Sheep. Retrieved April
30, 2010, from National Geographic:
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Tween Tribune. (2009, May 1). Experts claim to have cloned glowing dogs. Retrieved April 15, 2010,
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University of Wisconsin-Madison News. (2007, May 9). Creator of Dolly the sheep to give public lecture in
Madison. Retrieved April 20, 2010, from University of Wisconsin-Madison News:
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