Cloning In Biotechnology
The Future Impact on Human Life
Background
What Animals Have Been Cloned?
Throughout the last 50 years, a wide range of cloning experiments with animals has been conducted using a variety of techniques. Some of these animals being: mice, cows, sheep, chickens, cats, horses, monkeys, deers and many more. The techniques include splitting an animals embryo into a test tube and then implanting the resulting embryos in the wombs of an adult female animal, transferring the nucleus of a cell taken from an early embryo into an egg that had been amplified of its nucleus, and using a somatic cell taken from an adult cell. (1)
How Does Cloning benefit us?
When speaking of cloning many negative and fearful thoughts come to mind. We began thinking about the bad that cloning could do but never the benefits it could bring us. For example, studying animals is done to do research based on diseases, and if we could clone them, the amount of time needed to make a transgenic animal model would be reduced and there would now be a population of genetically identical animals for better study purposes. Also, cloning could be used to make stem cells, this could be used to grow whole organs and on other occasions, such as letting stem cells clone from someone with a disease, could help others researches study and understand the disease and possibly develop new/better treatments. (2)
What is Cloning Used For?
Cloning could be used for multiple things, a few of them being: medicine reviving endangered or extinct species, livestock, cells, infertility, organ replacement, genetic research and more. (3-9)
Why is Cloning Important?
Genetically modified (GM) animals are something commonly talked about. But have you ever wondered what their real intentional purpose/use is? The biomedical application of the cloning technique to genetically modify animals is so that their organs and cells could be transplanted into humans. Animal cells and organs are needed due to how our cells and organs are rejected by another even if they are from the same species. This is where genetic modification could help, it could be used to disguise an animal's cell/organ from humans and therefore reduce or maybe even eliminate a humans body rejection toward its own cells/organs. There are many people who die each year due to the unavailability of human organs for transplantation. (10)
"Many other diseases could be treated by the transplantation of genetically altered cells. For example, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and Huntington's diseases are caused by the death of specific cells in the brain. Preliminary research has shown that it is possible to alleviate the symptoms of Parkinson's disease by transplanting fetal pig brain cells into a patient's brains. A related technique may be applied to diabetes, another widespread disorder. Currently, diabetics rely on insulin therapy, which is far from being an ideal treatment and is certainly not a cure. The transplantation of genetically modified animal pancreatic islet cells--which could secrete insulin in response to the body's varying glucose levels, just as the cells in a healthy individual do--could effectively cure the disease. There are numerous other examples, so transplantation therapy could potentially relieve suffering in many thousands or even millions of patients.” said James Robl a Transgenic Animal and Bovine Cloning Expert. (10)