The Miracle of Cloning?

By Anthony Stauffer

Yea But your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could; they didnt stop to think if they SHOULD! - Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) Jurassic Park (1993)
Science and morality; science and financial funding; science and religion; science and God. In the recent past, and in the current world we live in, the word pairings I just mentioned go together about as well as oil and water. Sure, there have been successful emulsions of these word pairings in various branches of science that have led to recipes of human advancement. However, if there is one branch of the sciences that has rarely achieved this, it is genetics. To quote Dr. Malcolm again; Genetics is the most awesome force the world has ever seen, and you wield it like a child playing with his fathers gun. Are we playing with our fathers gun? I have found that, depending on who it is you are talking to, the father figure referred to can be very different. For those working in the field of genetics, the father could be their predecessors. For those with faith and religion, the obvious father is God. And for the general public, the father varies widely. The variation is expected, and it s a good thing, too. For variation, and having different views on a subject provide the necessary basis to ask the right questions to steer the science in (mostly) the right direction. But, nowhere in the world of science has the phrase playing God been thrown around more often than in genetics. What is cloning? The miracle mechanism of life is Deoxyribonucleic Acid, a.k.a. DNA. The ability for it to replicate its stored genetic code is the driving force in the development of every living complex organism on this planet. So, what is DNA? It is a long polymer consisting of a backbone of alternating sugar and phosphate groups with a nucleobase (the Adenine, Thymine, Guanine, and Cytosine we all learned about in biology in high school) attached to the sugar. The sugar can be either ribose (hence, RNA), and deoxyribose (hence, DNA). In most organisms on the planet, these long polymers are double-stranded, with the strands connected at the nucleobases to form base pairs and, overall, a ladder shape. The double-strand is then tightly coiled to form the famed double helix. In humans, DNA comes in the form of 46 chromosomes, arranged in 23 pairs, per cell. Now, for the eye-opener. Take a single human cell and its 23 chromosome pairs.

Separate the pairs and uncoil each chromosome. Each chromosome will measure approximately 4.5 centimeters in length; so, end-to-end, all the chromosomes will achieve a length of about 2.07 meters (over six feet, for those of you who don t like the International System). It is estimated that, in the average human body, there are about 10 million million (1013) cells. Simple math puts the total length of all DNA in the human body at 2 x 10 13 meters, or nearly 67 round trips from the Earth to the Sun (20 billion miles)! To take it one step further, there are 7 billion humans on planet Earth, combine all that DNA and we can achieve 9 round trips to the Andromeda Galaxy (2.5 million lightyears away) and have enough left over to travel another 60% of the way back to Andromeda! And thats just humans; imagine if we did this exercise for all life-forms on the planet But I digress; we are here to talk about cloning. Cloning, in the realm of biotechnology, is the copying of genetic material for the purpose of producing an exact genetic facsimile of the original. At present, there are three types of cloning that we are capable of: DNA cloning, reproductive cloning, and therapeutic cloning. Gene studies fall in the realm of DNA cloning. In this process, the particular gene is isolated from a DNA strand. Once isolated, it is inserted into what is called a bacterial plasmid, a circular ring of self-replicating extra chromosomal DNA. The completed ring is then placed into a selected bacterium for replication. Therapeutic cloning, also known as embryo cloning, is cloning technology that has come under a lot of criticism and garnered a lot of resistance from the general public. Stem cell research is the driving push behind the use of therapeutic cloning. In this process, a womans egg has its nucleus removed, and in place of that nucleus is inserted the nucleus of a cell of a donor patient. The egg is then stimulated to divide, and, after a certain number of divisions, the mass achieves the level of blastocyst. In this form, technically referred to as an embryo, there is an outer layer of protective cells and an inner mass of stem cells. These stem cells are referred to as pluripotent, meaning that they can be inserted into the original donor at the needed area and, ideally, produce the necessary cells to repair any damage. The only cells that these stem cells cannot produce are reproductive ones (eggs and sperm). The moral compass is pointed toward this process of research because, in the extraction of the stem cells from the blastocyst, the blastocyst is destroyed. However, as stated above, these cells can be used for the specific patient that donated the somatic cell for on-site cell repair, or, as technology advances, to even produce whole organs. These organs would cause the patient no chance of rejection since the new organ would be genetically identical. The success of this line of research would eliminate the need for long lists of organ transplant patients and reduce the cost of such transplants. It could also allow for in-utero stem cell therapy for any fetus that is known to be developing improperly. Finally, there is reproductive cloning. This process is the same as the above process with the exception that, instead of harvesting stem cells at the proper stage, the embryo is left to continue call division until it is ready for transplant into a surrogate uterus until birth. To this day, several animals have been successfully cloned, including the first mammal, the famous Dolly. Dolly became the mother of six lambs during her seven year life, but she was euthanized

due to suffering from lung cancer and severe arthritis. And this is the issue with this type of cloning. Very often the clones suffer from disabilities, deformities, and premature death due to, what scientists believe, are errors or incompleteness in the DNA reprogramming process. Even this type of cloning, when successful, only produces a chromosomal clone of the original donor. DNA can also be found in cell mitochondrion, which provides the cell with its own power plant, and cannot be cloned. Immorality and Misconceptions of Cloning The debate over cloning all comes down to one central argument; at what point do we consider something to be alive? Or, to be more to the point, when do we consider an embryo a human being with the rights instilled to every living human on the planet? Life begins at conception. That is a phrase we hear very often in this debate. But what about organisms that reproduce asexually? What about bacteria and viruses that reproduce by cloning themselves? They are all accepted forms of life, and they are all forms of life that we suffer no moral dilemma in eradicating at will. Shall we take a look at our food supply? We raise animals and plants for our consumption; again, wanton killing for our benefit. As human beings we grant ourselves the right to pick and choose those plants and animals which are to be protected from us. We pick and choose that which is, essentially, sacred. And, of course, we put ourselves at the top of that list. It is an understandable choice, for we are unlike any creature on this Earth, able to have a distinct consciousness and change our environment in ways that no other living organism on this planet ever has before. We deem ourselves special, and we are. But it is that specialty that brings about our moral dilemmas. Whether you are religious or not, because of our nature, we all deem ourselves as having a soul. We stand now at a point in our history where we are able to reproduce ourselves without having physical sex. But it is the meeting of ova and sperm, producing an embryo, which is the point at when a new human life begins. The question is, if this is our definition of the beginning of life, then therapeutic cloning and the development of stem cells should not be considered human life, only an extension of it. Reproductive cloning has, as its goal, to produce a fully functioning new life. If done for a human being, then the aim is to produce another human being by asexual means. Is this morally wrong? Is the clone not a human being? Is it a soulless abomination? In the eyes of many, yes it is, because it wasnt conceived in the proper way. It is a human being that shouldnt be? I disagree, but I will not express my opinion here, that is not the purpose of this article. As for the therapeutic cloning, we define the blastocyst with the stem cells as an embryo. We do this because, since it is cells dividing within an ovum, it meets that definition. However, moral standards equate this with human life, and the destruction of this embryo in order to harvest the stem cells is the same as destroying a human life. Could a blastocyst used for the harvesting of stem cells go on to produce a clone of the original donor? Potentially, since the process for this is very similar to the process used for reproductive cloning. But that is not the

aim of therapeutic cloning. Stem cell research and the advances in medical technology because of it could save more lives than we could possibly fathom. But what is the ultimate fear of human cloning? It is the Hollywood idea of replacing a person of importance with a mind-controlled clone in order to advance some villains dark and devious plot. Here are the reasons why that would be next to impossible, at least with todays technology. Number one, we have never successfully cloned a human being, and the proper technology to do so, while not far off, is not yet available to us. Second, we have to have control over the clones aging process. Not only to quickly age the clone to age of the person it s replacing, but to then slow the aging process down to a normal rate when it s age is reached is a technology I have never seen anything about. Yes, there are rare instances in which humans have been born with disorders of improper aging, but those are uncontrolled disorders with no knowledge on how to control them. Finally, there is the transfer of consciousness and memory issue. It may one day be possible, within our lifetime, to transfer the contents of our mind to a digitized sate within a computer. But, aside from that, to transfer that digitized memory into a human brain, or to conduct brain or head transplants, this idea is impossible. There are too many uncontrolled variables to such an idea, at least at this point in human history. If God, or whatever deity or overarching concept you believe in, did not want us to commit such acts of scientific advancement, then why would we be able to develop the technology to take those steps forward? Is it Satan, or your respective dark moral entity, that drives us? Knowing what our technology is capable of, and incapable of, is it still wrong to move forward in these fields of research? I leave you to answer those questions on your own