Possibilities of Cloning
by Gianna DeRienzo
What is it?
Cloning is the process of producing similar populations of genetically identical individuals. In this case, you replicate a fragment of DNA and place it into an organism.
How is it being used currently?
Currently, therapeutic cloning is being tested. Therapeutic cloning is creating a cloned embryo for the producing of embryonic stem cells with the same DNA as the donor cell. These stem cells can be used to better understand diseases and create different treatments for it.
Obtaining human embryonic stem cells thru' therapeutic cloning [video infographic]
What is the benefit?
The benefit of cloning can change the world. Researchers hope to use therapeutic cloning to replace damaged or diseased tissues in organisms. Gene cloning is beneficial for studying different types of genes in the body. Finally, reproductive cloning can be used to produce whole identical copies of an animal or human.
What are the disadvantages and how does it affect organisms?
There are some disadvantages to cloning including the technique of reproductive cloning. Most cloned animal embryos do not develop into healthy individuals. Also, cloned animals are physically affected and have a increase in birth size and are born with defects in vital organs.
What's its economic affect?
Cloning is highly expensive with little success. More than 90% of the attempts to clone offspring fail. This takes up a lot of time and money.
How does it affect the environment?
Cloning can have both a positive and negative affect on the environment. Cloning can be used to bring back an extinct animal, but also there can be a negative affect to that. This is because the cloned animals share the same genetic information, which may contain a disease that can affect multiple organisms.
How does it affect the world in a social aspect?
Cloning affects the world in a social aspect because of the cost and how dangerous it is. Since cloning is still a new advancement, there are multiple ways it can go wrong; which costs money. Also, overall it takes away from individuality.
How will is affect our future?
Cloning can help the future is many ways. For example, cloned organs can help people in need of a organ transplant. Also, extinct species can reappear if scientists get pieces of DNA from the extinct animal.