Clonong Uses & Ethics

Cloning: Uses & Ethics

Within the last few years, talk of bioengineering has exploded from the science world and become part of our everyday lives. From the foods we buy at the grocery store, to the pets we own in our homes, and even our own bodies, we are all affected by the breakthroughs in cloning. The intended use for cloning, and other bioengineering science was to advance medicine, conservation, and food production, making our current methods safer and more efficient. But then came the question: Can humans be cloned? Almost unanimously, the governments of the world said we shouldn't even try (though some scientists still intend to). But since then, people have been questioning the ethics of "playing God" with any of our animals and plants. What do you think?

Super Crops

The idea is to genetically engineer plants to be pest and disease resistant, and cold/heat/drought tolerant by mixing and matching genes from other living things.

Pro 1: Third world countries that couldn't produce enough food due to environmental conditions can now grow these new crops.

Con 1: Crops naturally having these traits, perfected over centuries, would then be worth much less than the quickly grown and mass-produced newcomers.

Pro 2: Only the most healthy and fertile of plants will be used for reproducing, increasing production and potentially ending world hunger.

Con 2: Creation of designer crops for mass production decreases the genetic diversity all living beings need for prosperity and evolution. Cloning the same plant over and over again leaves no opportunity for evolving even better traits.

The Future of Pharming

Picture every sheep providing the same fine, luxurious wool; every cow offering only the leanest, juiciest porterhouses. And across the field, a hundred pigs bred with diabetes wait for new experimental treatment, and a hundred more carry hearts that are more easily accepted by human recipients.

Pro 1: Better, healthier animal products can be mass-produced more efficiently for human consumption.

Con 1: Industries and companies without access to this technology, or the money to utilize it will be left behind.

Pro 2: Better animal models for scientific experiments. For example, lab mice could be replaced with transgenic pigs, which are much closer physiologically to humans.

Pro 3: Donor organ and tissue shortages will be drastically reduced, if not eliminated, with the increase of transplants from transgenic pigs or other animals.

Con 2: Organs transplanted from other animals (xenotransplantation) is not always safe. Many diseases can be transmitted to organ recipients from the donor animal without careful screening and regulation.

Con 3: Animal cloning has a varying success rate. Dolly, the now famous Scottish sheep, was the only success out of 277 attempted clones (29 embryos developed normally, 1 survived). More recently, Japanese scientists had a success rate of 8/10 when cloning cows from adult cells, though 4 died soon after birth. While more knowledge is gained with each attempt, the use of animals in known unsuccessful experiments when alternatives exist is raising ethical questions.

Cloning Endangered and Extinct Animals

With the gigantic frozen cell collection at CRES (San Diego Zoo's Center for Reproduction of Endangered Species), the possibility of cloning any endangered species back to a self-sufficient population is very real.

Pro 1: Cells from CRES can be used to