The Death of Cloning Essay

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Derrick Alba - May 18, 2004 Human Cloning: Speech #3 Part 1 (Pro)

Thesis: The subject of Human Cloning is a controversial issue.

Introduction: On one hand there are benefits in terms of scientific and medical research and applications. On the other hand there are ethical, legal and moral implications attached to human cloning.

Preview: In the first part I will go over some of the types of human cloning and their benefits in terms of science and medicine while in the second part, Brian will go over the ethical, legal and moral implications to human cloning.

Three Major Types of Human Cloning

1. Embryo cloning (a.k.a. artificial twinning):
• Embryo cloning might be more accurately called "artificial twinning", because it simulates the mechanism by which twins naturally develop.
• It has been successfully carried out for years on many species of animals. Some very limited experimentation has been done on human embryos.
• Nature itself is the greatest cloning agent. In about one of every 75 human conceptions, the fertilized ovum splits for some unknown reason and produces monozygotic (identical) twins.

Possible Benefits to Artificial Twinning:
• In terms of medicine, identical twins provide the best, most compatible organ and tissue donation for their siblings. Twins caused by artificial twinning would provide the same benefits.
• Artificially twinned embryos can be implanted and birthed separately theoretically providing larger birth weight babies than natural twins who have to share the same womb.

Common Myth: Cloning Xeroxes a person.
• Cloning merely re-creates the genes of the ancestor, not what he has learned or experienced.
• Conventional wisdom holds that about half of who we are comes from our genes, the other half, from the environment.
• Cloning cannot re-create what in us came from the environment; it also cannot re-create memories.

2. Adult DNA cloning (a.k.a. reproductive cloning):
• This technique which is intended to produce a duplicate of an existing animal.
• It has been used to clone a sheep and other mammals. The DNA from an ovum is removed and replaced with the DNA from a cell removed from an adult animal. Then, the fertilized ovum, now called a pre-embryo, is implanted in a womb and allowed to develop into a new animal.

Possible Benefits to Adult DNA Cloning:
• Some talents seem to be genetically influenced. Musical and artistic ability seems to run in families. Cloning using the DNA from the cell of an adult with the desired traits or talents might produce an infant with similar potential.
• A heterosexual couple in which the husband was completely sterile could use adult DNA cloning to produce a child. An ovum from the woman would be coupled with a cell from the man's body. They might find this more satisfactory than using the sperm of another man.
• Two lesbians could elect to have a child by adult DNA cloning rather than by artificial insemination by a man's sperm. Each would then contribute part of her body to the fertilized ovum: one woman would donate the ovum, which contains some genetic material in its mitochondria; the other woman the nuclear genetic material. Both would have parts of their bodies involved in the conception. They might find this more satisfactory than in-vitro fertilization using a man's sperm.

Common Myth: Human cloning reduces biological diversity.
• Population genetics says otherwise. Six billion people now exist, soon to be eight billion, and most of them reproduce. Cloning requires in vitro fertilization, which is expensive and inefficient, with only a 20% success rate. Since 1978, at most a half million babies have been produced this way, or at most, one out of 12,000 babies.
• Over decades and with such great numbers, populations follow the Law of Regression to the Mean. This means that, even if someone tried to create a superior race by cloning, it would fail, because cloned people would have children with
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