Should Human Cloning be Allowed?

Should Human Cloning be allowed

I . Introduction

Cloning is the production of a group of genetically identical organisms from a single individual . Cloning is widely used in horti-culture to produce plants with desirable traits plants produced from cuttings or by grafting are examples of clones . Cloning also occurs in nature in organisms that reproduce asexually . Cloning in higher animals was first performed with frogs and salamanders , in the 1960 's . By the early 1980 's , it was being used with mammals , particularly livestock and laboratory mice

Cloning in mammals is

performed under a high-powered microscope using microsurgical instruments . The first step involves extracting the nucleus from a body cell of an embryo the embryo is selected from a pregnant female who has previously borne offspring with desirable traits . The nucleus is inserted into a newly fertilized egg cell whose own nucleus has been removed . The fertilized egg with its new nucleus is placed in a culture dish for several days , until it develops into an embryo . The embryo is then inserted into the womb of another female (the surrogate mother , who eventually bears the offspring (Kass , 1998 . By taking a number of cells from the same donor embryo and using a number of surrogate mothers , it is possible to produce a large group of identical offspring . The cloning technique can also be used to create identical twins , doubling the number of offspring that any particular female can produce at one time

This study presents the arguments on both sides of cloning whether should it be legalized or not

II . Background

The human body contains 100 trillion cells . Inside most cells is a nucleus that contains a complete set of the body 's blueprints . Those blueprints are twisted into 46 packets called chromosomes

Unravel a chromosome , and you get the long , thread-like molecule called deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA . Within the DNA are the blueprints - called genes - for making proteins . The DNA molecule has a twisted ladder-shaped structure (the famous double helix . The genetic code can be read in the rungs of the ladder . The code is spelled out by four chemicals : adenine (A , thymine (T , guanine (G ) and cystosine (C , A pairs with T , and G pairs with C to form the rungs of the ladder

A small fragment of DNA is cut out of a chromosome . That fragment is cloned to create millions of copies . The cloned fragments are divided into four special solutions , in which they begin to replicate HYPERLINK "http /www .questia .com /SM .qst ?act adv contributors Steven 20L 20Baird dcontributors Steven 20L 20Baird " Baird , 2002 . Each solution contains a chemical fixer ' that stops the process when a particular letter is reached . A color dye is used to stain the fragments . The partially reproduced fragments are dropped into gel-filled capillaries inside a sequencing machine : An electric charge pulls the fragments down the capillaries : bigger molecules move more slowly than small ones sorting by size . The sequence is read automatically by a laser as the colored fragments come out...