Cloning. Is More Really Better?

Now a day, people will do anything to maybe make themselves live longer, make themselves healthier, or try anything else, especially if it benefits them or their children. Then along came the idea of cloning. What if would you say if someone told you, that you could clone your pet so you would never lose it even if the original one died? What would you say? Well, some people have put that very idea out there, and they’ve made it work. All this sounds great, but the downsides of cloning are rarely looked at, and cloning isn’t as easier as just pressing the copy button.

Cloning is the creation of a genetically identical organism from a cell taken from a host (the genetic parent) and grown in to the younger version of the organism inside a surrogate mother. The process of cloning involves taking a cell nucleus from the organism donor cell, the one you want copied, and putting it into a recipient cell, usually an egg cell taken from the same type of organism soon after ovulation. During this process, the genes are swapping, and not all of them are being reconnected.

When an offspring is created, it gets both maternal and paternal genes. Thus making it unique, but similar in the way that it has characteristics from both the mother and father from which they were created. When making a clone however, the offspring gets genes from only one parent, and all those genes are directly put into the cell to grown the clone. Which in the end results in an exact copy of the single parent. In regular reproduction, the DNA from both parents goes through a process called imprinting. Imprinting is a process where all the genes are marked so only one copy, either maternal or paternal, is turned on. That way the offspring has characteristics from both parents, but may only slightly resemble either one of them. In cloning, since the offspring is only getting genes from one parent, imprinting does not occur and all the genes are turned on. Thus resulting in the exact copy. However, this creates some problems later on. This type of coping can create defects in the DNA sequences. Defects in the genetic imprints of the DNA from a single organism donor cell could lead to some of the developmental abnormalities of the cloned embryos.

With cloning, there are some benefits. If or when the technology gets to a certain point, maybe it could be used to clone healthy organs. These organs could be used for people who are waiting on donor lists all over the world. Maybe there could be a way to clone a specific type of soil, so that crops could grow in places they never could before, this could help to end world hunger. The reality of all this becoming current and used as soon as a month from now is slim. Can the technology advance that much that it is able to be used for all the good possible benefits.

Cloning could be used to “bring back” a loved person or an animal that has passed on. That’s wonderful, and I’m sure many people would love to have that special someone or pet back. What they don’t know is that if that person or animal died because of something in their genetics, then the same horrible fate will be passed on into the clone, thus making the person or animal and themselves go through the same ordeal again. The only way that this would not happen would be if the person or animal had become sick or it was an outside cause, because acquired traits are not passed on in any type of reproduction, that’s why people are all so different.

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