WOULD YOU REALLY WANT TO CLONE YOUR LOVED ONE? 

                                                           

Before I give you my thoughts on that possibility, I will give you some info on cloning living animals and how it has been done.

Artificial embryo twinning is a relatively low-tech way to make clones. As the name suggests, this technique mimics the natural process that creates identical twins. In nature, twins form very early in development when the embryo splits in two. Twinning happens in the first days after the egg and sperm join, resulting  that the embryo is made of just a small number of unspecialized cells. Each half of the embryo continues dividing on its own, ultimately developing into separate, complete individuals. Since they developed from the same fertilized egg, the resulting individuals are genetically identical.

Artificial embryo twinning uses the same approach, but it is carried out in a Petri dish instead of inside the mother. A very early embryo is separated into individual cells, which are allowed to divide and develop for a short time in the Petri dish. The embryos are then placed into a surrogate mother, where they finish developing. Again, since all the embryos came from the same fertilized egg, they are genetically identical.

Somatic cell nuclear transfer also called nuclear transfer uses a different approach than artificial embryo twinning, but it produces the same result—an exact genetic copy, or clone, of an individual. This was the method used to create Dolly the Sheep.

To make Dolly, researchers isolated a somatic cell from an adult female sheep. Next they removed the nucleus and its entire DNA from an egg cell. Then they transferred the nucleus from the somatic cell to the egg cell. After a couple of chemical tweaks, the egg cell, with its new nucleus, was behaving just like a freshly fertilized egg. It developed into an embryo, which was implanted into a surrogate mother and carried to term. (The transfer step is most often done using an electrical current to fuse the membranes of the egg and the somatic cell.  

Subsequently, Dolly was an exact genetic replica of the adult female sheep that was used to provide the somatic cell. Dolly was the first-ever mammal to be cloned from an adult somatic cell.   

Over the last 50 years, scientists have conducted cloning experiments in a wide range of animals using a variety of techniques. In 1979, researchers produced the first genetically identical mice by splitting mouse embryos in the test tube and then implanting the resulting embryos into the wombs of adult female mice. Shortly after that, researchers produced the first genetically identical cows, sheep and chickens by transferring the nucleus of a cell taken from an early embryo into an egg that had its nucleus removed.

It was not until 1996, however, that researchers succeeded in cloning the first mammal from a mature (somatic) cell taken from an adult animal. After 276 attempts, Scottish researchers finally produced Dolly, the lamb from the udder cell of a 6-year-old sheep. Two years later, researchers in Japan cloned eight calves from a single cow, but only four survived.

Besides cattle and sheep, other mammals that have been cloned from somatic cells include: cat, deer, dog, horse, mule, ox, rabbit and rat. In addition, a rhesus monkey has been cloned by embryo splitting.

ViaGen Pets, a company based in Texas, says it charges $50,000 for the cloning of a pet or $1,600 to merely preserve your pet’s genes. The famous singer and actress, Barbara Streisand has two cloned dogs. She paid $50,000 to have this done.  Two of her three Coton de Tulear dogs were clones. They had been cloned from cells taken from the mouth and stomach of her original dog before it died.

But will the cloned dogs actually be similar?  Physically, yes. Now what is really interesting is that both dogs have different personalities. It follows that they obviously don’t have the same personality of the original dog.

Have humans been cloned?

Despite several highly publicized claims, human cloning still appears to be pure fiction. There currently is no solid scientific evidence that anyone has cloned human embryos.

In 1998, scientists in South Korea claimed to have successfully cloned a human embryo, but said the experiment was interrupted very early when the clone was just a group of four cells. In 2002, Clonaid, which was part of a religious group that believes humans were created by extraterrestrials, held a news conference to announce the birth of what it claimed to be the first cloned human—a girl named Eve. However, despite repeated requests by the research community and the news media, Clonaid never provided any evidence to confirm the existence of this clone or the other 12 human clones purportedly created by the. Their refusal to provide proof is a good way of defining the word, “fiction’,

In 2004, a group led by Woo-Suk Hwang of Seoul National University in South Korea published a paper in the journal Science in which it claimed to have created a cloned human embryo in a test tube. However, an independent scientific committee later found no proof to support the claim and, in January 2006, Science announced that Hwang's paper had been removed from its publication before the magazine was published.

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.

Can there be success in attempting to clone human beings?

Reproductive cloning is a very inefficient technique and most cloned animal embryos cannot really develop into healthy individuals. For instance, Dolly was the only clone to be born live out of a total of 277 cloned embryos. This very low efficiency, combined with safety concerns, presents a serious obstacle to the application of reproductive cloning.

Researchers have observed some adverse health effects in sheep and other mammals that have been cloned. These include an increase in birth size and a variety of defects in vital organs, such as the liver, brain and heart. Other consequences include premature aging and problems with the immune system. Another potential problem centers on the relative age of the cloned cell's chromosomes.

As cells go through their normal rounds of division, the tips of the chromosomes, called telomeres, shrink. Over time, the telomeres become so short that the cell can no longer divide and, consequently, the cell dies. This is part of the natural aging process that seems to happen in all cell types.

As a consequence, clones created from a cell taken from an adult might have chromosomes that are already shorter than normal, which may condemn the clones' cells to a shorter life span. Indeed, Dolly, who was cloned from the cell of a 6-year-old sheep, had chromosomes that were shorter than those of other sheep her age. Dolly died when she was six years old, about half the average sheep's 12-year lifespan.

Suppose you are sixty-year old male and your wife is fifty-five years of age. She is suffering from an inoperable cancer in her brain. You know that she will die within a month or less. You want to have her cloned so that her clone will be the same as your wife is.

The clone of your wife will still be suffering from the brain cancer and her lifespan will be just as short as that of your actual wife. However, even if she wasn’t suffering from cancer; when she emerges from the womb of a surrogate mother, she will be a baby.  There will be a sixty-five year gap between your ages. And suppose you die when you are seventy-five years of age. The clone of your wife will then be ten years of age. She would be young enough to be your grandchild.

Now comes the real problems.  Remember, your wife’s memories will not be transferred to your wife’s clone. The clone will have her own memories.  Will anyone tell her that that she is a clone of her real mother who died of cancer of the brain? If the cloning procedure was successful and it becomes known that the clone is physically the same as her original mother, will she be teased for being a clone and not being an ordinary human being?

The UK has a clear prohibition on reproductive human cloning, but works to keep laws current with and relevant to technological advances. The EU supports funding for embryonic stem cell research, but has banned human cloning.

The USA has a complex mix of state and federal regulations and interlocutors often conflate the cloning issues with the abortion debate, which gives rise to strong objections to both types of cloning and to stem cell research.

Now comes the really horrible aspects of this problem. Clones might be considered to be very useful as a supply of spare parts for humans. Clones could be created as a replacement source for kidneys, hearts, livers, etc.

Suppose a thirty-year-old man needs a new liver. He has a clone. The clone would be thirty years younger than his original host. The original human being would have to wait at least twenty years before his clone’s liver would replace his damaged one. The doner would probably be dead by then. Of course, he could get a liver from another clone if their blood matches. 

Clones would have no human rights since they wouldn't be true humans as they would be creations ofscientists. It would be imperative that they be kept separate from humanity to prevent the cross contamination of their genes.

Clones could be essential to future human life. If this would really happen in the future, it would be a terrible abuse about human beings raised for that purpose. They would have functional brains and wonder why some of their organs are being removed. It would make war crimes appear as if they are mere slaps in the face. It would bring humanity to an extreme low.  I hope that human beings never step that low. The only thing worse would be cannibalizing the clones for food.