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Pros And Cons Of Therapeutic Cloning

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We’ve all seen the movies. A person gets in a tube. The scientist, usually equipped with crazy hair, pushes a few button and a huge flash of light occurs. Two people walk out completely identical. And of course we know movies would never lie to us. The first cloning of a mammal, while not quite the mad scientist scene expected, was still an amazing event. It was a sheep, later named Dolly. One day, in the not so distant future, we can all use these techniques to clone our dearly passed pets or even family members. Dolly was cloned in 1996 using reproductive cloning and since then many things thought unthinkable twenty years ago have been achieved.

Cloning is a complicated process of creating cells from things other than a sperm and egg cell. There are three basic types of cloning. Gene cloning is the simplest and makes exact copies of segments of DNA. Reproductive cloning, the kind used with Dolly, is when a whole animal is reproduced. Therapeutic cloning is the creation of cells and tissues that are intended to be used for experiments or replacing diseased …show more content…

They took a cell from an adult sheep’s udder and extracted the DNA. It was then put into a “blank” cell. This was the first time an adult cell had been used instead of an embryo cell. Adult cells do not have as much DNA as embryo cells. After 277 attempts an embryo was finally produced. Six days later the cells were transferred into a surrogate mother. The pregnancy progressed like normal and Dolly, named after singer Dolly Parton, was born on July 5th, 1996. Dolly lived for six years, which is only half the lifespan of a normal sheep. Dolly even had lambs. This first cloning led to many discussions about the morals of cloning. Animals cloned can have various health defects. The discussion even was presented that if humans were cloned they would lack personality and emotions. While humans haven’t been cloned great gains have been

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