Science, in the past few years has made great strides in the field of mammal
reproduction. They’ve worked for years to find out exactly what happens during
a pregnancy, and also how it works. We’ve come so far in these stages as to
gain the knowledge needed to make oral contraceptives. However, I am not writing
this report to enlighten you on these subjects, or to debate the ethical issues
of them. This report is focusing on the creation of life, not the destruction of
one. Up until a few years ago, we’ve only known one way to reproduce, but now,
thanks to the research and endless hours of experiments by those dedicated to
finding out if it really is possible another way, there is a new method of
reproduction called cloning. I’m not going to debate the moral issues of this
subject, but rather tell you how it’s achieved. How does it work? There are
two methods of cloning. The first, called embryo cloning, has been achieved
years before in frogs, other amphibians, mammals, and once it was tried with
humans, however both attempts to do this with the humans failed. The second
method of cloning is achieved by using an adult cell, not an embryo. To do this
scientists remove an egg cell from a female, and remove the chromosomes,
nucleus, etc, leaving no way for the mother interfere with the genetic part of
the reproduction. However, the parts of the egg cell needed for cell growth and
development are left intact. The cell from an adult mammal is then taken away
from its owner. Being placed in a cure dish, the cell is starved of nutrients,
but is still kept alive. The reason for this: the cell must stop dividing in
order for cloning to take place. The nucleus from this cell is removed. The
nucleus and the egg cell are placed next to each other, and electrical charges
are emitted into them. These electrical charges make the two fuse, or combine
together. After about 6 weeks, the egg cell, now artificially fertilized, is
placed back into the uterus of another female of the same species. Allowed to
grow and develop as normal, the baby is born after the normal amount of time
needed to let a baby develop. The result: a physical clone of the animal. Some
facts about cloning A friend of yours has an ingenious plan to take a cell from
a dead person like Hitler, clone him, and try to take over the world, with his
help. First off, your friend needs adjustment. Secondly, you couldn’t clone
him to be the same person, with the same personality as before. Being placed in
a different environment, with different situations, he would not develop
emotionally as he had before. On the contrary, you could turn him into a little
choirboy if placed into the right situations. So if it’s that easy, why
doesn’t a person like Bill Gates clone him self, just for fun` or to have a
living memoriam of himself when he’s gone? It isn’t that easy. The United
States have taken steps to ban the cloning of people, passing the bill against
it two years ago. It’s also expensive, and Dolly the sheep was successfully
cloned after 276 unsuccessful tries. So does anybody own cloning? Yes, believe
it or not. Although the creators of Dolly were the first to clone an adult
mammal, the company that owns the patent is the Massachusetts company of
Advanced Cell Technology (ACT). A common misconception: clones will NOT have the
same DNA as the other animal. A type of DNA called mitochondrial DNA is not
removed from the mother during the fertilization. This DNA is used for energy
production cannot be transferred with the host’s nucleus. So, it also is left
intact in the egg cell for the fertilization. In the present and future of
cloning What may we be expecting from cloning in the future? Try this for size:
scientists recently made the news for cloning the first pigs. And pigs are one
of the animals more closely related to humans….so, I’ll let you make your
own inference. Also, the team at the Roslin Institute has figured out how to
make a starved cell able to reproduce again. Their patent is still pending. Have
you wondered why the team used a sheep to clone? The answer: sheep are closely
related to humans, just as pigs are, and in Scotland, where Dolly was cloned,
sheep are very very very very very cheap. Some have had ideas of using cloning
to bring back extinct species, and, mainly, help the endangered species go back
to how they once were. Also, there are teams in different places working on ways
to clone just organs of mammals for transplants. However, this is expected to
turn out with poor results, because it is likely that the body will reject these
organs, as it would others. The End While many believe cloning is an unnecessary
evil, others believe it will become a chief way reproduce crops, or livestock
that have favorable qualities about them. I believe that cloning can be useful
in these ways, but very dangerous in others. What I’m saying is that we’re
meddling with technologies we don’t know much about and further research
should be done to discover what is needed to master this science before we go
making our own species of animals. We are still like novices to this new
science, and should respect it, not toy with it.
