CLONING+1

Human Cloning

"... each child who is born should be treated as an individual. If you make a copy of a person, you are saying that you don’t want a child, but a person just like the one you’re cloning. If you clone a running back, for example, you’re saying to that child, “Don’t be you, be a running back.” You’re choosing his path for him." -Ian Wilmut (man who cloned Dolly the Sheep)

History of Cloning:   [|Cloning Timeline] This timeline takes you through all major developments in genetic engineering that led up to cloning humans. Starting in prehistoric times, farmers began to genetically engineer their crops by cross-breeding them to create a better plant. In 1953, Watson and Crick discovered the double helix structure of DNA, and in 1981 Chinese scientists become the first to clone a fish. In 1989, the Human Genome Project is created and in 1995 researches at Duke University Medical Center transplant hearts from genetically altered pigs into baboons. Finally, in 1997, Dolly the sheep is successfully clones from adult sheep cells at the Roslin Institute in Scotland. Since Dolly was created, many countries including the US have banned human cloning, which has made it hard for researchers to research stem cells.

Cloning in the News: [|A play about human cloning 3/6/09] The play //A Number// features many characters, but only two actors. A man finds out that he isn't an individual, he is actually one of many clones of another man. This troubling concept explores one of the negative aspects of cloning humans.

[|Have humans been cloned successfully? 3/3/09]An Italian doctor claims to have cloned 3 human children nine years ago. This would be significant because no one has successfully cloned a human before.

[|Is the Brave New World Upon Us? 2/25/09]//The Emerging Brave New World// by Thomas A. Glessner, looks at todays society and compares it to the Brave New World portrayed in Aldous Huxley's famous novel. Christians are comparing Barack Obama's support of stem cell research to the manipulation and murder of humans in //BNW// for the supposed betterment of society.

[|Cloned human embryos successfully reprogrammed using human eggs 2/16/09]Human donor eggs create better, more normal stem cells than the hybrids that most researchers use. The hybrids are created by using an egg cell from an animal such as a cow or rabbit. This study shows how when a human egg cell is used more of the regular human genes are turned on than when an animal egg cell is used. This is important because there is a shortage of human donor egg cells which could slow down stem cell research.

**How Mammals are Cloned:**

[|Cloning Mammals]This site lists the three most common ways of cloning mammals in simple terms that anyone can understand. The three most common ways are the Somatic Cell Nuclear Method, Roslin Technique, and the Honolulu Technique.


 * Ethics of Cloning: **

[|Biblical references]This article looks through the Bible, finds quotes relevant to cloning, and explains how they relate to the ethics of cloning.

Criticism of Human Cloning by Inmaculada de Melo-Martin, PhD, MS. Dr. Melo-Martin is now an associate professor in the Division of Medical Ethics at Weill Medical College of Cornell University. In this paper she argues that both the cases for and against human cloning fail to make their case because they make faulty assumptions.

media type="file" key="Cloning_the_Dead.asf" width="300" height="300" Cloning the Dead- Parents who have lost a child want to use cloning to make a clone of their dead child. This raises many issues because the clone might feel pressure from the parents to be exactly like the dead child and may never get to be their own person. media type="file" key="The_Ethics_of_Human_Cloning.asf" width="300" height="300" Ethics- Cloning Dolly the Sheep took many trial and error experiments before the technique was perfected. Only 1 in 10,000 eggs became an embryo, and this number may be drastically different in humans since sheep embryos divide in a manner that makes it easier to clone them. What would you do with the mistakes when trying to clone a human? What if all the clones were born deformed? You can't just kill them because that would be considered murder.

**Cloning in the Media:**


 * -Movies: **
 * //The Island// (2005)
 * //Jurassic Park// (1993)
 * //The 6th Day// (2000)
 * //Blade Runner// (1982)
 * //The Boys from Brazil// (1978)

**-Books:**

 * __Cast of Shadows__ by Kevin Guilfoile
 * __My Father's Face__ by Donald Duckles
 * __The House of the Scorpion__ by Nancy Farmer
 * __Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang__ by Kate Wilhelm
 * __After Dolly: The Uses and Misuses of Human Cloning__ by Ian Wilmut and Roger Highfield

**RSS Feeds:**

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Podcasts: [|CedarEthics: To Clone or Not to Clone] This podcast talks about bioethics and how cloning manipulates human life. It emphasizes the ban on cloning in Ohio.

Blog Posts: [|One Step Closer to Human Cloning] The newest technological breakthrough for human cloning is that researchers are able to put adult human DNA into a human egg and "reprogram" the adult DNA back to its embryonic state.

<span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-align: left;">Fun and Games: [|Test your Cloning Knowledge]a cloning quiz

[|Clone a Mouse!]An interactive game taking you through the steps of cloning a mammal.

[|A few cloning games]more fun cloning games.

<span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-align: left;">**Discussion Questions:** <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: left;">1. If you lost a child in child birth/at a young age would you want to clone that dead child? If you were infertile, would you want to clone yourself/your partner so that the baby would be a part of you?

2. Do you think human cloning should be banned? Why or why not?

3. Should research scientists be allowed to clone human organs for transplants? Can medical advances become too much? What do you think is the point of stopping for therapeutic cloning?

4. 1 in 10,000 animal clones do not become embryos and this number may be similar in humans. When do experiments gone wrong become murder? When the DNA is inserted into the egg cell? When it becomes an embryo? And what do you do with the babies that are born deformed? Are the potential benefits of cloning an entire human worth the risks?