Intro:

For informative paper, the main purpose is to provide as much information as you can for your audience. Since informative paper is only providing information,I did not take a side in this paper.

CAN WE CLONE HUMAN ALREADY?

Feng Zhuo

The City College of New York

CAN WE CLONE HUMAN ALREADY?

Would you be scared if I told you that human cloning has already happened? If you were, congratulations, the world has a bigger surprise for you: Not only human cloning has already happened, there’s a biotech firm is using dead babies to make money.

You probably have seen this type of news title across online media sites so many times this week and wondering if this really happened. The answer is NO, what those titles say did not happen, and not even close. First, clone is not as same as copy. Clone is a technology to grow an identical creature, not making a current version of the cell that belongs to, which means it takes time for the clone to grow up. Second, we don’t even have the technology to clone human so far, which directly proves that there’s no biotech firm can clone an aborted baby and keep the baby alive to harvest his/her organs. And I also have a big surprise for you: there are countless benefits in the technology of clone.

First, the public has been fooled by SCI-FI movies for so long. Copy and clone are two different ideas. Copy is to make another exactly same version of you, which includes your memories, knowledge, habits, and so on. Clone, similarly but differently, is to make a generically same version of you, anything not included in your gene will not be seen in your clone. In most SCI-FI movies, human is always copied, not cloned. Also, the technology of human cloning is still far away from being done. There’s a major type of cloning needs to be introduced in this article before I explain why it’s impossible: reproductive cloning. As the researcher Julian Savulescu (2005) has stated in the article “The ethics of cloning”, “Reproductive cloning is the use of cloning to grow a living person who shares the DNA of the progenitor. Live animals have been cloned using fission (in the cattle industry) and SCNT (e.g. Dolly the sheep).” (p.18), “The nucleus is removed from a somatic cell and implanted into the cytoplasm of a denucleated egg. The egg reprograms the somatic cell’s DNA so that a complete embryo can be grown from this cell. Using this technique, a theoretically endless number of clones can be created from the same individual.” (p.18). In layman’s terms, if we want to clone a human or any other creature, reproductive cloning is the method we can use. The process of reproductive cloning goes as: first, having an egg ready; second, removing a mature somatic cell from a cell that is from the creature you wish to clone; third, transferring the DNA of the cell into the egg; final step, putting the egg into another female creature, and wait for the creature gives birth. As we can see in the process of cloning, the clone would be born by another female creature, which means that when the clone is born, it will be a baby version of the somatic cell that belongs to. Also, in Morales’ (2009) article “Psychological Aspects of Human Cloning and Genetic Manipulation,” the author has explained that “In addition, some authors such as Pence (1998b) indicate that a cloned person would not be an exact copy of an adult human being. Although the gene structure would be very similar at the molecular level, there will be many differences. Moreover, Pence (1998b) and Strong (2005b) point out that the brain cannot be cloned or duplicated and, most importantly, the experiences of a human being cannot be replicated by cloning.” The quote indicates that who we are now is not completely made by our gene, the clone won’t have same memories, habits, thoughts, and personalities that its origin has. To be short, the clone would only have the same features the origin has genetically and nothing else would be the same, because the clone will be born, but not “created” or “copied”.

Second, we don’t even have the technology to clone human so far. In National Human Genome Research Institute’s Fact sheets of Clone (n.d., p.1), it states that “From a technical perspective, cloning humans and other primates is more difficult than in other mammals. One reason is that two proteins essential to cell division, known as spindle proteins, are located very close to the chromosomes in primate eggs. Consequently, removal of the egg’s nucleus to make room for the donor nucleus also removes the spindle proteins, interfering with cell division. In other mammals, such as cats, rabbits and mice, the two spindle proteins are spread throughout the egg. So, removal of the egg’s nucleus does not result in loss of spindle proteins. In addition, some dyes and the ultraviolet light used to remove the egg’s nucleus can damage the primate cell and prevent it from growing.” Namely, we can’t clone human so far because the technology is not mature enough to remove the egg’s nucleus without affecting the cell division, given it’s a major step of the process of giving a birth. Therefore, the news that biotech is using clone human to make money by harvesting the organs couldn’t be more wrong since we cannot even clone human.

Now, what about benefits? According to Julian Savulescu’s(2005) article “The ethics of cloning”, “Therapeutic cloning involves using cloning processes to produce embryonic stem cells, tissues or whole organs for transplantation. “, “Some types of disease and injury (e.g. Parkinson’s disease, spinal damage) have no potential therapies other than those involving embryonic stem cells.” (p.19). Embryonic stem cells are functional stem cells, which, theoretically, can be derived from human embryo. Otherwise speaking, therapeutic cloning is a method to treat and understand diseases, for example, Parkinson’s disease and spinal damage, by producing stem cells and tissues. Regardless of other great benefits in therapeutic cloning, curing genetic diseases is already an irresistible reason to not stop studying therapeutic cloning, there are gigantic proportions of people would be benefited by that.

However, is there really nothing to worry about human cloning? The answer is No. Human cloning just hasn’t happened yet, but when scientists can confirm that human cloning is possible technologically, it will probably be too late for us the unprofessional public to start worrying. There are two major issues in human cloning today. One is what we already introduced in previous paragraph, it cannot be done because of our unmatured technology; another one would be more difficult to solve: ethical issues.

We cannot pretend the fact that humans are greedy doesn’t exist. Once human cloning technology becomes mature, no matter human cloning is banned or not, there will certainly be some companies and black markets try to clone humans to make profits at any cost. It’s not hard to realize that most people are willing to do anything to save and bring back their loved ones, and the companies would count on that to make profits. If the government bans human cloning and using embryo for any cloning purpose, the easiest way to get embryos would be taking them from aborted babies because they are not officially documented. Unless the government monitors everyone, there would be no way to actually ban human cloning. There are certainly other profits can be made by cloning human in secret, but the main point is that if we know that we cannot prevent human cloning happens, should we keep studying it for the purpose of treating existing people’s disease while there are might be parents abort on purpose for money?

Now, let’s stop thinking about what human cloning technology can do to us for a second. Do you think of clone as another type of human being, given they have their own thoughts, feelings, and memories? Julian Savulescu(2005) gives a special point, “It might be thought that cloning for medical reasons (e.g. to produce bone marrow donors) would constitute treating the clone as a mere means.”(p.19). Despite the fact that every child was born for one or few reasons, will clone babies be treated the way human babies are treated if they were born for one very specific reason? If clone babies were sent to orphanage after becoming useless objects to their “biological parents”, will the government treat these clone babies the way they treat human babies? Even though these are all hypothetical questions, we cannot ignore the fact that there’s a great chance that these questions might become real issues.

In conclusion, there are great potential benefits in reproductive cloning and therapeutic cloning, for example, treating genetic diseases. Although human cloning is still fictional today, as science develops, the day that human cloning becoming true is getting closer. Certainly, there are so many unsolved ethical issues about clone, however, are all the questions getting raised worth to be thought about? If we think that some issue won’t stop us from developing human cloning technology, wouldn’t solving these issues become a waste of time? To put it differently, the real prior thing is not how we solve all the issues before creating clone human, but to think about what the factors of important issues are, and how to pick them out from all the issues are being raised.

References

National Human Genome Research Institute (n.d.). Cloning Fact Sheets. Maryland: U.S: Genome.gov. Retrieved from

https://www.genome.gov/copyright.cfm

Morales, N.M., (2009). Psychological aspects of human cloning and genetic manipulation: the identity and uniqueness of human beings. Reproductive Biomedicine. Opposing Viewpoints. Opposing Viewpoints in Context.

Savulescu, J. (2005). The ethics of cloning. The Medical Publishing Company. Opposing Viewpoints in Context.

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