To Clone, or Not to Clone?

5/12/2010
Jackson Switzer

In the movie Star Wars, the Empire makes thousands of "clones" of Jango Fe
tt to make an army of "clone" troopers. Have you ever wondered what a "clone" i
s? €A clone is a genetically identical copy of another organism. €Sometimes clon
ing is mixed up with genetic engineering. €They are not the same thing. €Cloning
is creating a copy of an organism, while genetic engineering involves modifying
, taking away, or adding genes.
Cloning is very important; it happens in nature every day. €Things like ga
rlic and yeast clone themselves to reproduce. €This is natural cloning. €Another
form of natural cloning is identical twins. €One way of cloning actually copies
the process of making identical twins. €First, a scientist takes an embryo, whi
ch is an unborn human or animal that is just starting to develop. Then the scie
ntist manually splits the embryo (instead of it splitting naturally), then lets
the two parts divide and develop on their own.
History One of the first cloned organisms was a sea urchin in 1885. €Yes, c
loning has been around for that long. €The headline in the newspaper was "Seeing
Double? €Sea Urchins cloned!" €The scientist who did it was Hans Adolf Edward D
reisch. €He showed that in Sea Urchins, by simply shaking a two celled embryo, t
he cells could be split. €Then the cells would grow into two genetically identic
al sea urchins.
Since then, there have been many more examples of cloning, like salamander
s in 1902, frogs in 1952, rabbits in 1975, cows in 1987, sheep in 1996, monkeys
in 1997, and mice in 1998. €Cloning is becoming a very big part of science.
Of all clones, the most famous example is probably Dolly the Sheep. €She w
as born on July 5, 1996, making her the first mammal to be cloned from an adult
somatic cell. €A somatic cell is any cell in a plant or animal that is not a rep
roductive cell. €An adult cell is from an adult organism, not an embryo. €So Dol
ly was the first mammal to be a clone from an adult cell that wasn't reproductiv
e.
Even though we have made many clones of animals, human cloning is still mo
st likely fiction. €There have been a few claims that someone has done it, thoug
h. €In 1998 some scientists in South Korea claimed to have cloned a human embryo
, but the experiment failed when the would-be clone was only made of four cells.
€In 2002 a religious group called Clonaid claimed to have made the first clone
of a human, a girl named Eve. €Despite their claims, though, they never provided
any real evidence for the existence of this clone or the 12 other clones they s
aid they made.
Should it be done?
There have been many arguments over whether cloning is right. Some say
no, cloning is wrong. Others disagree.
After researching both sides of the argument, my opinion is we should clon
e. Many people (like a lot of politicians and religious leaders) disagree and a
nswer negatively, saying it would not be ethically or morally right, and that it
would be, in effect, "tampering in God's domain". €Some people, who answer the
question positively, say that it shouldn t be anyone else s business if they want to
be cloned. €One man said, My decision to clone myself should not be the governme
nt s business, or Cardinal O Connor s, any more than a woman s decision to have an abort
ion. €Cloning is hugely significant. €It s part of the reproductive rights of ever
y human being. (Glenn, 2000) I think this is partly wrong, though. Thomas Jeffer
son wrote in the Declaration of Independence, We hold these truths to be self-evi
dent, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator wit
h certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursui
t of Happiness (Jefferson, 1776) . This means that all men have certain rights th
at should not ever be forcefully taken from them by a human, and three of those
rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If Thomas Jefferson is
correct, and all men are created equal, does that include clones? What if a do
ctor hasn t perfected cloning and a clone is born with all sorts of birth defects?
Is that human really created equal to all others? And do women really have the
right to abortion? What about all humans right to life? The baby that was abort
ed was killed, and therefore denied that right to life!
One of the main arguments against cloning is because people say that it de
nies individuals a singular identity. €They say that humans have the right to un
iqueness, and cloning makes a copy of a human, so the cloned human s right would b
e violated. €The counter argument says that if humans do have that right, which
they may not, cloning would not violate it. €Clones are the same person genetica
lly and physically, but they are not the same mentally. €A clone would not have
the same memory of the original, would not have the same intelligence level, and
would not have the same personality. €These things are not caused by genes, so
they will not be identical.
Another argument against cloning is caused mainly by two very influential
movies: Sleeper and The Boys from Brazil. €In Sleeper, someone keeps a dead dict
ator s nose intact for nearly a year, and then tries to bring that dictator back t
o life. €In The Boys from Brazil a Nazi doctor creates 94 clones of Hitler out o
f cells Hitler donated before death. There is a problem with something like the
se becoming a reality, though. Creating 94 clones wouldn t only take years; it wo
uld cost billions of dollars. So it is unrealistic for people to be scared of s
omething like that happening.
Sometimes people are also scared of someone creating an army of mindless c
lones. This is not possible. Clones are not robots, forced to do what their cr
eator says, but are human beings, with the same rights as non-clones, and with s
eparate minds and wills. So this is also unrealistic.
One reason people would want to clone humans is to bring back loved ones t
hat have passed away. They could pay for a scientist to make a clone of a dead
family member or friend, and it could be done. But the clone would not really b
e the same person as the original. As I said earlier, it would not have the sam
e intelligence, personality, or memory, so the clone would be very different. B
ut this doesn t stop some people. They still want to do it.
The argument isn t just about cloning humans, either. €Some people argue aga
inst cloning animals, too, along with plants. €Cloning plants can be, and usuall
y is, a very good thing. €All apples in some supermarkets are roughly the same s
ize and shape because they are clones. €For example, all modern apple trees that
produce Cox s Orange Pippin apples are clones of one tree planted about 200 years a
go. €The only big problem with cloning plants is if the original gets a disease,
the clones are just as likely to get that disease. Raju Kucherlapati, a geneti
cs teacher at Harvard University, says, Genetically modified plants have had a si
gnificant impact on our food supply and as the population of the world is growin
g it is important that we able to feed them. Cloning technology is very critica
l for this effort.
Animals are also a big argument. €Cloning animals can be very good for agr
iculture. €If a farmer has a cow that is very good for milking or has very good
meat, he could clone it and have a whole herd of that same cow. Mr. Kucherlapat
i, speaking about cloning animals, says, We will understand much about animal and
human development from these studies and will also help with many medical issue
s.
Cloning animals could help endangered species a lot, too. Scientists coul
d clone an endangered animal, which could very well help get it removed from the
endangered list. This has actually (sort of) happened before, with the European
Mouflon, a very small wild sheep. It was cloned in 2001 and lived for about sev
en months, which made it the first endangered mammal clone to live longer than i
nfancy.
 Also, some people have said they want to clone dead pets. €This could be d
one in the near future, or even now with a bit of luck and experience. €A drawba
ck from cloning pets, though, is that cloned animals are similar to human clones
: they aren t exactly like the original. €Like human clones, the animal wouldn t hav
e the same memory, the same intelligence level, or the same personality as the o
riginal pet.
Another reason for cloning animals is that, technically, you could bring e
ntire species back to life, if you had enough intact DNA from that animal. €This
holds true for dinosaurs too, like in the well know movie Jurassic Park. €It mi
ght not be a good thing to have dinosaurs come back to life, though.
One of the main reasons people clone animals is to help fight off disease.
€Scientists could genetically engineer an animal to fight diseases, and then ma
ke a clone of that animal. €They could also use the clones to create drugs that
help cure diseases in humans. I think this would save lives, and be a very good
thing to do.
My final reason for supporting cloning animals is for their organs. €I kno
w it sounds a little bit weird, but it s true. €A scientist could genetically engi
neer an animal so its organs would work in a human body. €After modifying the an
imal, the scientist would make clones of that animal, and use the clones organs t
o transplant into humans. €Right now scientist would most likely use pigs, becau
se they are around the same size and shape as human organs. In my opinion, this
sounds kind of unfair. €I know that it would save thousands of human lives, but
it would also kill a lot of animals.
In conclusion, I think cloning can be good, and can be bad. In my opinion, we s
hould definitely continue cloning plants and animals, and cloning humans should
be limited to things that will not deny the clones or the original their certain
unalienable rights . Cloning can be great, for things like human reproduction, fo
od, endangered species, curing people, and many other things, but can also be ve
ry bad, if done incorrectly.

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To Clone, or Not to Clone?