The Ethics Of Human Cloning

THE ETHICS OF HUMAN CLONING:
Although some scientists believe that human cloning is only 10 or 20 years around the corner, the process would be far more difficult than cloning a sheep. Researchers began by attempting to fuse 277 adult sheep cells with an equal number of eggs. This yielded only 29 embryos, which in turn resulted in only 10 pregnant sheep, only one of which successfully made it to term and gave birth to Dolly.
There is some misunderstanding about what constitutes a clone. A human clone would be the genetic identical twin, a generation or more younger, . But because people are more than a product of their genes, a clone would have its own personality, character, intelligence, and talents exactly as identical twins do . Cloning would lend much support to an age old debate of what determines the composition of Human Character , Environment or genetics.
Adult DNA cloning: (a.k.a. cell nuclear replacement) This technique produces a duplicate of an existing animal. It has been used to clone a sheep, and other mammals. The DNA from an embryo is removed and replaced with the DNA from an adult animal. Then, the embryo is implanted in a womb and allowed to develop into a new animal. It has not been tried on humans. It has the potential of producing a twin of an existing person. (U.S. Firm Clones Human Embryo for Cells)
Every cell in the body contains the genetic code to theoretically create an exact clone of the original body- except the sperm and egg. Our cells have been programmed to perform limited functions. The other functions are either dormant or turned off. Most scientists had believed that such differentiated cells could not be reprogrammed to be capable of behaving in the same fashion as as a fertilized egg. In the case of the sheep "Dolly" a cell was taken from the mammary tissue of a mature 6 year old sheep while its DNA was in a dormant state. It was fused with a sheep ovum with the nucleus removed. The cell was stimulated with an electric pulse. Out of 277 attempts at cell fusion, 29 began to divide. These were implanted in ewes. 13 became pregnant and one lamb- Dolly, was born.
Similar experiments on other species such as mice were unsuccessful. There is debate as to why.
Scientists wondered whether Dolly would be fertile, such as in the case of cross species breeding which produces invariably infertile mules. As well some cloned frogs are also infertile.
Therapeutic cloning: This is a procedure that starts off like adult DNA cloning. However, the stem cells are removed from the embryo with the intent of producing tissue or a whole organ for transplant back into the person who supplied the DNA. The embryo dies in the process. The goal of therapeutic cloning is to produce a healthy copy of a sick person's tissue or organ for transplant. This technique would be vastly superior to relying on organ transplants from other people. The supply would be unlimited, so there would be no waiting lists. The tissue or organ would have the sick person's original DNA; no immunosuppressant drugs would need to be taken.
Embryo cloning: This is a medical technique which produces monozygotic (identical) twins or triplets. It duplicates the process that nature uses to produce twins or triplets. One or more cells are removed from a fertilized embryo and encouraged to develop into one or more duplicate embryos. Twins or triplets are thus formed, with identical DNA. This has been done for many years on various species of animals; only very limited experimentation has been done on humans.