worldhistory0
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- Apr 20, 2008
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When most people hear the mention of cloning they imagine a breed of superior humans born without a soul that try to take over the world in some kind of apocalyptic invasion. Religious zealots spread fear by shouting doomsday and barking passages from Revelations.
The reality of cloning is that nature herself is the greatest cloning mechanism. In close to one out of every seventy-five human conceptions, the fertilized ovum splits and produces what we have become to know as twins. With embryo cloning, or "artificial twinning", this same process is done intentionally in a lab.
There are actually three types of cloning, embryo cloning as I mentioned above, adult DNA cloning and therapeutic cloning. The adult DNA cloning is a technique intended to produce a duplicate of an already living animal. Therapeutic cloning goes through the same initial stages as DNA cloning except that the stem cells are removed from the pre-embryo for the purpose of producing tissue or a whole organ for a perfectly matching transplant back into the person who supplied the DNA. The pre-embryo dies in this process and therein lays the controversy. All three cloning processes raise major ethical concern in our society when applied to humans.
The cloning of animal subjects seems to show potentially beneficial results. Transgenic pigs can be created with human genes allowing them to grow compatible hearts, livers and kidneys to save thousands of lives. These transgenic animals can also produce human hormones and proteins in their milk which, once separated, carry the power to heal humans.
Many groups and individuals question the morality of cloning and possible harmful effects if the technology falls into the wrong hands. Nazi Germany started a practice through which humans were bred to maximize certain traits. What would have happened if they had cloning technology? Would striving to create this master species of humans cause our own demise?
It is my opinion that we all consciously or unconsciously participate in manual trait manipulation, we choose our mates based upon some physical or mental trait we favor. Whether alike our own or completely different, their traits have a good chance of passing on to our children. This practice has been going on for thousands of years.
I knowingly manipulated the traits of my daughter. I possess the genetic predisposition of high bicep peaks and short points of muscle insertion to the bone. This makes for striated muscles that really bulge when flexed, traits possessed by top professional bodybuilders. This, combined with a genius level IQ and rich athletic family background, made me desire a mate with similar traits. The mother of my daughter has a close level of intelligence, the right physical traits and championship caliber athletic background in her family. My intentions were to increase the chance of these physical and mental traits being passed on so that my child would have all of the necessary gifts to become an Olympic athlete if he or she desired. This has proven true because she has exceeded all of our expectations and is always many steps ahead of what is considered to be average for her age.
Many pro-life supporters argue that an embryo is a human person with a soul. The embryo would be killed whether harvesting stem cells or subjecting it to most of the cloning processes. There is always a possibility of injuring or killing the embryo.
I propose using embryos and fetuses from willing mothers who are going through the steps to terminating the fetus. Many labs and universities could compensate her for going with this option. Many women who have difficulty dealing with a lost or aborted child can at least take pride that their loss might not have been for nothing. Although costly and time consuming, I think stem cells should be able to be harvested from donated umbilical cord blood when parents have the option of donating. I believe that as a woman has the right to choose whether to abort or carry a pregnancy to term we, as humans, should have the individual right to self-cloning technology.
The usefulness of stem cells cannot be argued. A stem cell is a primitive cell with the ability to change into any of the other two-hundred and ten cells in the human body. This means that any organ or tissue could be renewed and re-grown, cancers and most diseases would become a problem of the past. So far, scientists have been able to duplicate one-hundred and ten cells with stem cells.
Stem cells and cloning technology can be used to prolong life and revitalize failing and degrading organs. All technological advancement of the future might have to rely on cloning and stem cells if our scientists are to live long enough to carry out groundbreaking research. This would be a possible scenario if we have to play 'catch up' most of our lives despite the use of better teaching and learning techniques.
I also have a theory supporting such long claims to longevity as seen in the bible. Since stem cells, t-cells and growth hormone are all abundant within the fetus, placenta and umbilical cord, wouldn't eating it increase longevity? During my life I have scoured the bible and various historical texts and haven't been able to find out what the early people did with these parts during normal births and stillborns. Are the biblical claims to high longevity explainable through science? Were they unwittingly cannibals, eating stillborns, placentas or umbilical cords? These are people that probably went without food for long periods of time. Pregnancy with all its complications would be no stranger to them because they had no contraceptives and sometimes possessed thirty or more wives.
Aside from my wild theories I do think that cloning technology and stem cell therapies can treat, prevent and cure many diseases we have come to fear. Theoretically, subjects with mild retardation or paralysis could become functional. On the other hand, what would happen if we took someone of Einstein-like intelligence and increased their brain cell count with daily stem cell therapy?
George Bush halted all stem cell research temporarily, and then approved experimentation with sixty stem cell lines. Unfortunately, in that time many of the lines have degraded and many are owned by private research companies. About twelve lines are still available to public research facilities and universities but they are degrading rapidly.
Despite opinions comparing cloning technology and the harvest of stem cells as murder, no agreement has been made for at what point after conception personhood begins. Once this is resolved technology can move on. This ethical standstill of medicine versus religion and morals is as dangerous as the integration of church and state. I think most of the critics would agree if they found their child laying in a hospital bed waiting for an organ or paralyzed from the waist down.
The reality of cloning is that nature herself is the greatest cloning mechanism. In close to one out of every seventy-five human conceptions, the fertilized ovum splits and produces what we have become to know as twins. With embryo cloning, or "artificial twinning", this same process is done intentionally in a lab.
There are actually three types of cloning, embryo cloning as I mentioned above, adult DNA cloning and therapeutic cloning. The adult DNA cloning is a technique intended to produce a duplicate of an already living animal. Therapeutic cloning goes through the same initial stages as DNA cloning except that the stem cells are removed from the pre-embryo for the purpose of producing tissue or a whole organ for a perfectly matching transplant back into the person who supplied the DNA. The pre-embryo dies in this process and therein lays the controversy. All three cloning processes raise major ethical concern in our society when applied to humans.
The cloning of animal subjects seems to show potentially beneficial results. Transgenic pigs can be created with human genes allowing them to grow compatible hearts, livers and kidneys to save thousands of lives. These transgenic animals can also produce human hormones and proteins in their milk which, once separated, carry the power to heal humans.
Many groups and individuals question the morality of cloning and possible harmful effects if the technology falls into the wrong hands. Nazi Germany started a practice through which humans were bred to maximize certain traits. What would have happened if they had cloning technology? Would striving to create this master species of humans cause our own demise?
It is my opinion that we all consciously or unconsciously participate in manual trait manipulation, we choose our mates based upon some physical or mental trait we favor. Whether alike our own or completely different, their traits have a good chance of passing on to our children. This practice has been going on for thousands of years.
I knowingly manipulated the traits of my daughter. I possess the genetic predisposition of high bicep peaks and short points of muscle insertion to the bone. This makes for striated muscles that really bulge when flexed, traits possessed by top professional bodybuilders. This, combined with a genius level IQ and rich athletic family background, made me desire a mate with similar traits. The mother of my daughter has a close level of intelligence, the right physical traits and championship caliber athletic background in her family. My intentions were to increase the chance of these physical and mental traits being passed on so that my child would have all of the necessary gifts to become an Olympic athlete if he or she desired. This has proven true because she has exceeded all of our expectations and is always many steps ahead of what is considered to be average for her age.
Many pro-life supporters argue that an embryo is a human person with a soul. The embryo would be killed whether harvesting stem cells or subjecting it to most of the cloning processes. There is always a possibility of injuring or killing the embryo.
I propose using embryos and fetuses from willing mothers who are going through the steps to terminating the fetus. Many labs and universities could compensate her for going with this option. Many women who have difficulty dealing with a lost or aborted child can at least take pride that their loss might not have been for nothing. Although costly and time consuming, I think stem cells should be able to be harvested from donated umbilical cord blood when parents have the option of donating. I believe that as a woman has the right to choose whether to abort or carry a pregnancy to term we, as humans, should have the individual right to self-cloning technology.
The usefulness of stem cells cannot be argued. A stem cell is a primitive cell with the ability to change into any of the other two-hundred and ten cells in the human body. This means that any organ or tissue could be renewed and re-grown, cancers and most diseases would become a problem of the past. So far, scientists have been able to duplicate one-hundred and ten cells with stem cells.
Stem cells and cloning technology can be used to prolong life and revitalize failing and degrading organs. All technological advancement of the future might have to rely on cloning and stem cells if our scientists are to live long enough to carry out groundbreaking research. This would be a possible scenario if we have to play 'catch up' most of our lives despite the use of better teaching and learning techniques.
I also have a theory supporting such long claims to longevity as seen in the bible. Since stem cells, t-cells and growth hormone are all abundant within the fetus, placenta and umbilical cord, wouldn't eating it increase longevity? During my life I have scoured the bible and various historical texts and haven't been able to find out what the early people did with these parts during normal births and stillborns. Are the biblical claims to high longevity explainable through science? Were they unwittingly cannibals, eating stillborns, placentas or umbilical cords? These are people that probably went without food for long periods of time. Pregnancy with all its complications would be no stranger to them because they had no contraceptives and sometimes possessed thirty or more wives.
Aside from my wild theories I do think that cloning technology and stem cell therapies can treat, prevent and cure many diseases we have come to fear. Theoretically, subjects with mild retardation or paralysis could become functional. On the other hand, what would happen if we took someone of Einstein-like intelligence and increased their brain cell count with daily stem cell therapy?
George Bush halted all stem cell research temporarily, and then approved experimentation with sixty stem cell lines. Unfortunately, in that time many of the lines have degraded and many are owned by private research companies. About twelve lines are still available to public research facilities and universities but they are degrading rapidly.
Despite opinions comparing cloning technology and the harvest of stem cells as murder, no agreement has been made for at what point after conception personhood begins. Once this is resolved technology can move on. This ethical standstill of medicine versus religion and morals is as dangerous as the integration of church and state. I think most of the critics would agree if they found their child laying in a hospital bed waiting for an organ or paralyzed from the waist down.