Cloning Sheeps
Three years ago a sheep named Dolly became the biggest news since the
first
successful open-heart surgery. Dolly, unlike every other mammal on
earth is an
identical copy of its mother. Dolly has no father. The "miracle"
of
cloning was preformed by Dr. Ian Willmut and his team at Roslin Institute
in
Edinburgh, Scotland. The new research has opened a large amount of
possibilities
for the future use of the technique as well as many ethical
issues regarding
human cloning. The Roslin Institute team created Dolly by
transferring the
nuclei of adult sheep cells in to the egg of another female
sheep. The egg had
its natural nucleus removed by microsurgery. Ones the new
nucleus was implanted
in to the egg cell it now had a complete set of genes
identical to the sheep who
donated the nucleus. The transplanted egg cells
were then cultured for a short
period of time and implanted into a female
sheep to carry the pregnancy to term.
The nuclei of many different adult
cells were used in the experiment including
mammary gland cells, which were
the ones to produce the successful result. The
sheep born as a result of the
experiment was an exact genetic duplicate, clone,
of the sheep donating the
adult nucleus. Though other mammals have been cloned
before, they were always
created form embryonic cells, never a cell of a
fully-grown animal. This
research also proved that adult animal cells do contain
a workable copy of
all the genetic material needed to create a whole new animal.
Willmut's
technique is very difficult and requires a lot of work. Because of
this, it
is not practical way of creating animals. The company who funded the
research
plans on using cloning in order to create animals that will produce
important
drugs in their milk, but at this moment it is not the best way to do
it. On
the other hand, the difficult method will probably be improved and
simplified
in the future becoming an important tool in biomedical
research.
Unfortunately, this new discovery opens the door to the ethics
of human cloning.
Most scientists agree that human cloning is wrong and
should be banned. It is
now illegal in many nations including England but
remains technically legal in
the United States. The US government refuses to
fund any human cloning research
and has asked that all private companies do
the same. There are many ethical
issues involved in the debate about human
cloning including the fear that people
will create clones in order to use
them as organ transplants. The line between
cloning for research purposes and
for selfish reasons is very thin and many
ethics committees have been created
to discuss and determine the limits to which
this technique should be allowed
to go. Though the Wilmut technique is very
complicated and requires a lot of
work, the equipment needed can be found in any
advanced biological research
lab and it will be very difficult to prevent
doctors from offering cloning as
an option to patients who need help, such as
the parents of a dying child.
Other labs have now confided their progress toward
recreating Wilmut's
results and cloning may, one day, become as commonplace as
in vitro
fertilization.