Essay On Cloning

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Human cloning has been a controversial topic ever since the cloning of a sheep in 1996 that resulted in a sheep named Dolly. Cloning is a form of asexual reproduction which occurs when an adult nucleus is inserted into an egg whose own nucleus and genetic material has been removed. Animals have been successfully cloned, though the success rate is less than one percent, but a human has yet to be genetically copied. Though human cloning does have some theoretical benefits, the possible negative affects outweigh the positives. Human cloning can result in the shortening of lifespan, the limiting of human adaption and evolution, and may even have unseen psychological impacts. Therefore, human cloning and all further scientific research should be banned.
One reason that the cloning of humans should be outlawed is because it could result in the shortening of humans’ lifespan. As humans age, the telomeres at the end of chromosomes get shorter. But, what happens when the nucleus that is transferred to the egg in order to clone a human is already old? This could result in the reduction of the cloned human’s lifespan. Enough research has not yet been done on the shortened lengths of telomeres in relation to the lifespan of cloned animals to draw a conclusion, but cloned animals do show a trend of a shorter lifespan than the average counterpart. Dolly, the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell, lived only six years while the average sheep lives nineteen to twenty years. When Dolly’s chromosomes were observed, they had shorter telomere lengths than normal. Imagine if a human was cloned and lived only thirty percent of an average human’s lifespan. Scientist are yet to prove a direct correlation between cloning and lifespan, but why take ...

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...oman’s egg outside of the woman’s body in a lab and the resulting fertilized egg can then be returned to the woman. Donor eggs or sperm can also be used in order to produce a child if necessary. These different techniques can be used in order to fix infertility problems and have high success rates with no need for cloning. To infertile couples just having their own child is what is important and human cloning is definitely not needed in order to do so.
Human cloning is not something that needs to be introduced to the world. Given all of the negative effects that human cloning has on the clone itself as well as the future human population it is not worth furthering our research into something that could cause so many problems. Until a purpose arises that outweighs all of the negative effects of human cloning, we must come together to avoid a potential catastrophe.

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