Cloning : You Say Cloning Is Bad But Do You Know Why?

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You Say Cloning Is Bad. But Do You Know WHY? Despite the failure of cloning an adult mammal after numerous years of research, Ian Wilmut, an embryologist of the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh, Scotland, found a way to do the seemingly impossible. Wilmut and his colleagues took mammary-gland cells from an adult sheep and placed them in a solution that essentially starved them of nutrients and cause them to stop growing for a few days. Then, with a spark of electricity, they fused each mammary cell with an enucleated egg cell. The resulting cells were allowed to grow into embryos, which were then transplanted into surrogate mother ewes to complete their development. Nearly three hundreds attempts at this technique resulted in failure. Some eggs did not accept mammary cell nuclei, embryos that were produced died, and lambs that were born were abnormal and died. But one lamb, apparently healthy, survived the procedure: Dolly, who was born in July 1996 (Berry).

On February 23rd, 1997, the success of producing a clone of an adult mammal was announced. The world was astounded by news of a new technological advance that shook the foundations of biology and philosophy. Dolly became a media sensation in seconds. She was the lead story on every television and radio broadcast and graced the front page of every newspaper around the world. However, Dolly per se did not seem to be the core of Dolly-issue. It was the idea that this technology could be applied to humans.

Most people obviously have been panicking that human cloning is coming closer in hand. Worldwide anti-cloning movement started to begin. Many countries banned human cloning. Within hours of announcement of Dolly, eminent politicians and policy-makers lined up to jump on the anti-cloning bandwagon. President Clinton rushed to ban federal funding of...