Cloning could only happen in science fiction movies but now it seems like it is becoming a reality or is it? In this 21st century, anything is possible and this has been proven when the first man landed on the moon. Now there are talks of cloning going around and arousing suspicions in each persons mind. What is cloning? It is simply a term used when producing an identical of something but ‘what’ is the question. The discovery of DNA proved to be the ultimate discovery of all time as scientist has a better understanding of what we are.
1.1 Background Information Ever since the discovery of DNA or Deoxyribonucleic Acid, there had been amazing discoveries that had helped human race especially in the world of medicine and farmers in increasing the food production. Each year, scientists become more aware of what DNA is and how we inherit some characteristics from our parents. Then questions on possible cloning began to stir. Tests were carried out, experiments were done on animals and the results were both devastating and amazing.
First of all, what is DNA cloning? To different people it has different meaning. According to a website www.cancerweb.ncl.ac.uk, DNA cloning is ‘the use of DNA manipulation procedures to produce multiple copies of a single gene or segment of DNA’. 1970’s was when animal cloning began and the animal that was usually tested on was mice. Of course the first few experiments should disastrous results as shown in diagram 1 below.
Diagram 1 However, after much further investigation Dr. Ian Wilmut of the Roslin Institute in Scotland had successfully cloned a sheep. ‘Dolly’, the name of the sheep brought new light and perhaps hopes to the new world. Of course, there were those who were sceptic of Dolly’s existence. After Dolly, 8 other species of animals were successfully cloned and now the question that is yet to be answered is are humans able to be cloned? Below are diagrams of those successful mammals to be cloned.
There had been theories that mice and humans are in common and that both of not clone able, which simply means they cannot be cloned. But after the success of cloning mice and sheep and other species of mammals, there is hope yet for human DNA cloning. The only thing that is stopping such a project is the question of morality and ethical as well as religiously. Is the world ready for such technology?
There are a number of people out there who strongly agree and support of the idea cloning. Rael is an organisation set up for those believers of cloning. Here, there are talks of cloning should be legal and must be put into more research than any other projects going on in this world. Reason being humans are from outer space. This organisation was founded by a French journalist named Rael. 13th December 1973, was the day that changed his life when he had an encounter with the ‘alien being’ from outer space. Shown below in diagram 6 is a rough image of what the ‘alien being’ looked like.
From the results shown, not a lot of people are aware of human cloning. So, the public should read more newspapers or find more information about this in the internet for example. They should try to catch up with the latest news in the human genome project. Although majority of the participants are against human cloning even if they have limited knowledge about it, this is because they act from their own personal view or religious point of view. If they had a broad knowledge of human cloning, the results would have turned out differently.
The number of participants is small so there is a less significant result and they show some unreliable results. To get a fair and unbiased result, it would be best to have more participants involved and be more specific. Specific in this case is to ask the public as a whole and ask those who are in the medicine profession to compare whether scientists or doctors feel the same way as the public regardless of their profession. Also, it would be best to have an interview with a person who is involved in the human genome project.
For the publics best interest, there should be a lot of open talks before the public is to judge on human cloning. The scientists involved should also be more honest and of course where progress is made, they should inform the public so that they could decide for themselves whether this technology is beneficial to humankind or not. If the public is against human cloning, a petition could be done or even a demonstration to stop human genome project. This type of action would pressure the government and force them to ban cloning because of ethics, moral, religion and of course human rights.
Creating clones would cause more damage because it contributes to an increase to the world’s population and therefore would be crowded. To avoid this from happening the scientists and government should think twice before they proceed with this because the question is if human cloning is successful, does it really benefit the human race? This question remains unanswered until the day a living proof is made. As for the first baby cloned named ‘Eve’ is concern there is no proof that she is a clone of her ‘mother’ because no DNA tests are carried out yet.