Using Technology to Clone

Essay by cheyennee3College, UndergraduateA+, September 2006

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Cloning can be a very sensitive subject. It seems that it's a battle between science and ethics. Does the ladder outweigh the former or vice versa? Maybe a few definitions will shed some light on the subject. Cloning is to create a genetic duplicate of an individual organism through asexual reproduction, as by stimulating a single cell? (Webster's 211). "Parthenogenesis is reproduction of organisms without conjunction of gametes of opposite sexes." (Webster's 800). Cloning has its medical uses, but do the ethical implications outweigh the advantages? The goal of genetic engineering is that every child be born strong, healthy, and well suited to make its way to the world. If genetic engineering would be used in this way the world would probably be a place of less disease. Sure it may be unethical to do some tests on humans, but without them medical progress would come to a halt. Cloning might also directly offer a way of curing diseases or a technique that could extend means to acquiring new data for the sciences of embryology and how organisms develop as a whole over time.

Science has been trying for years to come up with cures for genetic diseases and so far haven't really come up with anything that is truly helpful. On the other hand, with the technology of genetic engineering scientists may finally be able to start to understand the causes of diseases and to develop possible treatments and even prevention. For instance, the most studied disease is Cystic Fibrosis. Although, we have not found a cure yet, science might be getting close to coming up with a way of preventing Cystic Fibrosis. Science has made some major discoveries in the past forty years. In the 1960's two French scientists by the names of Jacques Monod and Francois Jacob...