Type a new keyword(s) and press Enter to search

Genetic engineering and human cloning

 

            Just visualize for a second that you are one of the human clones that will exist within this decade, and imagine putting up with all the arguments that many opinion leaders are currently struggling to make illegal: that cloning is a threat to human dignity and nobility, that it's a slippery slope, that it's playing God, that everyone has an entitlement to a unique and exclusive genome (except identical twins?) or to an unknown genome, and so on and so on, etcetera, etcetera. Now how would this possibly make you feel? Perhaps, and maybe in all probability, you would feel much the same way as a black man would suffering from racial abuse, or even a woman being a victim of sexual harassment. Regretfully, however, by the time a human clone arrives at an age where he or she can be aware of what is being interpreted, each and every one these arguments we hear today will be forgotten.
             In order to fully understand the whole impact of genetic engineering and human cloning we must first gain a knowledge of exactly what they are. First, we must understand that without genetic engineering human cloning will not be possible. Genetic engineering is the process of changing or altering the genetic make-up of an organism to produce a new organism. In retrospect cloning takes an organism that reproduces by sexual reproduction and alters it into producing asexually. To use a specific definition, the American Medical Association (AMA) defined cloning as "the production of genetically identical organisms via somatic cell nuclear transfer. "Somatic cell nuclear transfer" refers to the process which the nucleus of a somatic cell of an existing organism is transferred into an oocyte from which the nucleus has been removed" (Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs 1). In other words, cloning is the method of produce a baby that has the same genes as its parent. You take an egg and remove its nucleus, which contains the DNA/genes.


Essays Related to Genetic engineering and human cloning