“Cloning is one of the greatest scientific achievements of our time.” That’s how a Nobel Prize winner once put it about cloning. However, scientists disagree over its benefits as well as disadvantages. Here are some pros and cons of human cloning or duplication.
Pros And Cons Of Human Cloning & Duplication
Pros And Cons Of Human Cloning
When talking on cloning, it’s difficult to pin down the exact benefits and drawbacks. Many people say that they would like to have their own baby, but they don’t want to spend too much money on doing so. Others feel confident with cloning as it will help in saving endangered species like whales, dolphins, rhinos and many others from extinction. It can also provide great tools for research in medicine. Some claim that cloning could change the future of science and improve medical treatments for diseases like cancer. In this article, we look at the pros and cons of human cloning.
Pros Of Human Cloning
1. Protecting Animals From Extinction
The first pro of human cloning is protection. Today, there are various animal populations whose population has been declining due to natural factors such as habitat destruction and loss of feeding grounds. As more animals are brought into captivity, the number of animals in zoos has increased by 20 percent. According to estimates by researchers, each zoo in the United States now holds around 70 different kinds of animals. Even though it may be illegal to keep animals in the wild and have them bred, scientists feel that a better solution to protect these animals is through keeping them housed in controlled environments. This reduces the chances of overcrowding and reduces predation. Besides, in zoos, all animals get access to a variety of amenities like food and water, which helps make sure they stay healthy and happy.
2. Saving Endangered Species
Some species need to go extinct due to threats like habitat, deforestation and poaching. For example, elephants are at risk due to deforestation, and tigers are endangered because a tiger can easily become aggressive when it thinks an elephant might come. Moreover, overpopulation of certain animals leads to other problems like high mortality rates due to lack of enough space for the animals to live comfortably. There is no doubt that keeping endangered species is important for research purposes but they might not be able to survive after the researchers run out of resources to study them. Therefore, we should try and find ways to save these species. By conducting experiments on such species, human beings could develop better treatment options and find effective solutions to their current problems. Also, if they use human cloning methods, they will provide these animals with a chance to have children who are healthy and fit to carry on the life they need.
3. Developing New Treatments
There have been plenty of medications developed by humans, though scientists believe that we can only test on animals. Scientists at Harvard Medical School (HMS) found out that using embryonic stem cells to create new stem cells could provide useful results for treating several illnesses including Parkinson’s disease. Furthermore, testing laboratory mice with human egg cells produced pancreatic cells, kidney cells and liver cells that could help treat diabetes. With new discoveries like those mentioned above, scientists will be able to develop better treatment options for diseases and prolong the lives of patients suffering from various issues. If cloning technology becomes available, doctors and scientists could test many things on lab animals. They could also conduct tests on embryos to see if cloning technology can produce successful pregnancies. Then they could perform reproductive cloning on these patients using this technique. Finally, they could perform genetic experiments on cloned embryos and collect the data for further development of therapies.
4. Research & Development On Biological Models
Human cloning would benefit us in numerous ways, especially in terms of developing therapeutics and other related fields that could be applied in various scenarios. We already know that scientists can use animals as models to conduct basic research. To test the potential of certain drugs and even develop products for people, scientists must start with animal models. With human cloning, scientists wouldn’t need to use animals in labs or test on them as the process is based on the processes involved in biology and genetics.
5. Advance Science
For decades, scientists believed that living organisms could replicate themselves. But today, they are aware of DNA replication or replication, which is what takes place inside living cells. Through studying animal cells, scientists are now learning so many things about the way biological systems work which they might not be aware of when looking at animal models used for cloning experiments. Although animal models and genetic studies cannot provide evidence that human beings evolved from ancestral forms, scientists do know that it is possible. Scientists are able to learn so much about cell divisions, genes that regulate human survival, and ways in which cells divide inside the body. Because human cells replicate in groups called mitotic cells which means that they are continuously going through division, scientists are trying to understand the ways in which these cell divisions are regulated. One question they are asking is why scientists have yet to observe the process of mitosis inside human cells. A major reason for this difficulty to observe is again the fact that human cells are not made to undergo mitosis and this explains why it has taken nearly 100 years since they were discovered by Darwin to observe this process.
6. Genetic Engineering- A Big Win
Because scientists know and are curious about what happens inside living cells, they begin to study them and learn about their behaviors because they want to know why some human cells behave in certain ways but not in others. Once they learn the differences between cells, they develop techniques to modify them to perform different functions. Genetic engineering allows scientists to alter their cells or insert foreign DNA inside them. Thus, they get a source of proteins to enhance them, which makes it easier for scientists to get new ideas about how cells function. Another advantage of cloning technology is that researchers are able to design gene therapy or other types of medicines using this method. Using this way of treatment has been shown to reduce chronic diseases like HIV and tuberculosis as well as decrease the severity of symptoms in patients suffering from cancers.
7. Reducing Expensive Medicine
Another reason scientists are interested in the progress of science is to search for new cures for diseases they know have no cure at present. Doctors prescribe new drugs every day when treating various illnesses. These drugs are expensive and take many years before they show signs of working properly. Now scientists are still struggling to discover cures for common chronic diseases and are still unable to obtain effective treatment alternatives completely free of cost. Eventually, scientists will come up with medicines for such conditions and they can be offered for free to patients. This, along with improved technologies for production could result in cheaper medication being available for everyone. More affordable drugs will mean more opportunities for us to seek treatments.
8. Improving Health Care
If we adopt new techniques to manipulate our cells, the possibilities of enhancing health care are endless. The first person to successfully insert genes in a pregnant woman’s cells was Jonas Salk, who performed the same experiment in 1971 at Stanford University. Since then, his vaccine became a breakthrough in medical care, allowing babies born to mothers who had donated sperm to receive the necessary immune system components. Similarly, other experts have done similar experiments, including Rosalind Franklin, Charles Chen and Jonathan Dax and many more. These scientists have successfully tested several vaccines on monkeys as well as on human beings and their findings prove possible. So far, the most successful use of this technology lies in managing autoimmune diseases like Rheumatoid Arthritis. Scientists have learned so much from mice regarding how they become sick, and now they are seeking solutions to improve the management of the condition.
9. Prevent Antibodies Against Infections & Diseases
Antibodies are part of our immune system that help fight infections and diseases in the body. When antibodies attach to viruses or bacteria, they prevent the pathogen for good. What if one day scientists had the ability to clone antibodies and replace those that attach to infections? Imagine that scientists could generate antibodies for various purposes, preventing infections, improving immunity, or fighting against certain diseases without needing to inject people with pills or injections. These antibodies could be used in treatments like chemotherapy, reducing allergies and even helping people recover faster from surgery.
10. Drug Discovery
As previously stated, one of the main goals of drug discovery for both humans and animals is creating medicines and other remedies to treat various ailments. This involves searching for ways of introducing a molecule or protein into the body. When scientists do so, they create new compounds to fight off specific diseases and disorders. Drugs are created from chemicals produced in laboratories and injected directly into the body. In comparison to earlier days when drugs were created based on knowledge obtained through experiments carried out in laboratory animals, now genetic manipulation of proteins is becoming increasingly viable. Earlier scientists needed huge amounts of expensive equipment and tools during experiments, but now they can achieve this effect simply by inserting a gene at an appropriate location. Researchers can make proteins without having to grow it inside a colony or create it inside a fish tank to imitate conditions like temperature, pH balance etc. Pharmaceutical companies have been making medicines for hundreds of years and this could potentially transform drug development if researchers can perform these tasks in labs and use gene editing to control proteins. Additionally, scientists can make drugs while understanding only the structure of proteins and not the chemical interactions between them. This means that they can use existing molecules to fight illness or infection. Ultimately, by performing research on such diseases in laboratory and testing them on humans, scientists will be helped to develop treatments and other medicines.
Disadvantages Of Human Cloning
1. Loss Of Privacy
Human cloning has raised eyebrows among privacy activists. While human cloning may have positive effects in protecting endangered species of animals and increasing the number of endangered mammals like elephants, humans would have little control over their personal information. People might think that by cloning humans could become parents in the laboratory and start breeding their own offspring. Though human cloning
