Your Clone and You

Your Clone and You

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Your Clone and You

When the idea of human cloning first emerged and began showing its potential for moving from the realm of science-fiction into science-fact. The ethical implications turned from speculative discussions into large scale moral, social, and religious debates. As the technologies behind cloning develop the ethical debates surrounding human cloning become more prevalent; their outcomes will shape the course of future development and possibly the way we define the human race.

Your Guide to Cloning

A clone is either an organism or a group of cells that shares an identical genetic code with their ancestor. When we hear the term clone used it is normally referring to a Reproductive clone the technical definitions aside a reproductive clone is simply an almost exact copy of another animal or human grown from a single cell into a complete living organism. This type of cloning is just one of several and to develop a proper understating of cloning and the debates surrounding this controversial subject we must first clearly understand all the avenues of research. Cloning research is broken down into three main fields Recombinant DNA Technology (DNA Cloning), Reproductive Cloning, and Therapeutic Cloning,

DNA Cloning

Recombinant DNA Technology (DNA Cloning) is by far the most common, least controversial, and most overlooked form of cloning research. Practiced in almost all bioengineering labs across the world it is an integral part of biological study and research across many fields. DNA Cloning is the process of replicating small sections of DNA (genes) in a host cell. Think of it as making many copies of an interesting recipe from cook book to share with your friends “It was through the chemical synthesis of gene fragments that insulin and somatostatin have been produced through recombinant DNA technology” (Hubbard. Jr., 1980). This process was widely used by researchers in the Human Genome Project to replicate enough...