By: Ryan Rose

I am interested in cloning because it is hard to believe that you can make a copy of yourself, but it only has your physical characteristics. It is also interesting how they make a clone and put the different cells together.

Before I began to research cloning, I knew that a clone only has the physical characteristics of the being’s cells that made it. A clone doesn’t have the mental characteristics of the being who’s cells it came from, because it is born as a new animal or person with its own soul, giving it its own interests and thoughts.

When I started researching cloning I hoped to learn how cloning really worked and why people feel that it is unethical and why some people feel that it is a way to help advance technology.

John Gurdon was the first scientist to clone tadpoles in the 70’s. Ian Wilmut and his colleagues of Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland, cloned Dolly the sheep in 1997, though it took 276 attempts to be successful.

According to a CNN report, Professor Hwang Yoon-Young of Hanyang University in South Korea cloned a human embryo and extracted the stem cells from it. Scientists say that the technique is not to make babies, but to further therapeutic cloning, a process that is a possible cure for many diseases, such as diabetes, spinal cord injuries, and Parkinson’s disease. Dr. Rudolph Jaenisch said “The experiment proved that cloning is possible using human cells.” The only problem, according to opponents, is that the embryos are destroyed after the stem cells have been removed, destroying a human life.

Cloning is relevant to today’s world because it can be used to “grow” new organs and reproduce historical scientists, artists, and authors, such as Albert Einstein, and to mass produce clones of animals and plants that produce important medicines. Sheep have been engineered to produce human insulin. Cloning can also be used for couples that cannot conceive naturally and to produce rare plants.

I have learned there are three different types of cloning:

DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) Cloning-the transfer of a DNA fragment of interest from one organism to a self- replicating genetic element. Basically, DNA Cloning is the cloning of genes or other chromosomes for further research. Scientists that want to study a certain gene usually make multiple copies of that gene using bacterial plasmids, self- replicating extra-chromosomal circular DNA molecules, that are distinctly different from the normal bacterial genome. Genes and other chromosomes are copied to make enough samples for further study. In order to clone a gene, a fragment of DNA containing the specific gene that you are studying is removed from chromosomal DNA using restriction enzymes and then merged with a plasmid that has been cut with the same restriction enzymes. When the piece of chromosomal DNA is united with its cloning vector, or carrier, it’s called a recombinant DNA molecule. After the introduction into appropriate host cells, the recombinant DNA can be cloned with the host DNA.

Reproductive Cloning- is a technology that’s used to make an animal that has the exact same DNA of a living or previously living animal. In a process called somatic cell nuclear transfer, scientists moved the genetic material from the nucleus of a cell of an adult donor to an egg that has had its nucleus and genetic material removed. The reconstructed egg containing DNA from a donor cell must be treated with, either, chemicals or electrical current to stimulate cell division and then it is transferred to a female’s uterus, where it continues to develop until birth. Dolly the sheep was cloned using reproductive cloning in 1997 by Ian Wilmut and his team of researchers at Roslin Institute, Edinburgh, Scotland, and died, February 14, 2003, of lung cancer and crippling arthritis. Dolly had given birth to 6 lambs the natural way before her death.

Therapeutic Cloning- the cloning of human embryos for scientific research. The goal of this therapeutic process isn’t to make babies, but to get stem cells that can be studied to treat disease, such as heart disease, Alzheimer's, cancer, diabetes, and spinal cord injuries. The stem cells are important to researchers because they can be used to make any specialized cell in the human body. Stem cells are removed from the egg after it has divided for five days, the egg at this stage of development is called blastocyst. The process destroys the embryos, bringing in the ethical concerns. In November scientists at Advanced Cell Technologies, a biotechnology company in Massachusetts, said that they had cloned the first human embryo, but the results were limited in success. Recently, South Korea was successful in cloning a human embryo.