Essay against human cloning.

Essay by minutemikeCollege, UndergraduateA+, December 2005

download word file, 7 pages 1.0

Downloaded 86 times

Have you ever thought about what it would be like to have a clone of yourself? It would definitely be bizarre watching yourself grow up all over again. In order to obtain that copy of yourself, human reproductive cloning would have to take place. Human reproductive cloning is the process of taking genetic material from a person, and using it to make an embryo, in the hopes that it will develop properly, and in the end become a child. The beginnings of what we today refer to as cloning, actually go back to the early part of the twentieth century--1901 to be exact. Hans Spemann (1869-1941) was a German embryologist who was a professor of zoology (1919-1935) at the University of Freiburg. In 1901, he split a 2-cell newt embryo into two distinct parts, successfully producing two different larvae (Thompson).

Recently, the issue of human cloning came to the public's attention when scientists from the Roslin Institute announced they had successfully cloned "Dolly," the sheep, in February 1997.

Dolly and other cloned animals were produced with nuclear transfer technology. Scientists remove the nucleus of an egg retrieved from a female animal. They replace it with the nucleus taken from a cell from the animal they want to clone. The cell could come from the skin or almost any other part of the body. DNA in the nucleus contains hereditary instructions for the new individual. Next, scientists manipulate the egg to make it begin developing into an embryo (Woods). Four years after Dolly was produced, a Time/CNN poll found that 90% of all Americans opposed cloning humans (Ethics of...). So why if human cloning sounds like such a hot idea, do 90% of Americans oppose it? Undoubtedly it's the moral and ethical ramifications that surround cloning.

Understand that cloning is not...