Rhetorical Essay - Human Cloning

Human cloning is the process of creating an identical copy of a human being by duplicating one's deoxyribonucleic acid (or DNA) for short. In laymen's terms this means creating a genetic twin of a human being. Cloning a human was not taken seriously by scientists or policy makers until the 1960's. A Nobel Prize winning geneticist, Joshua Lederberg, wrote articles in the publications; American Naturalist and The Washington Post, sparking debate in 1966. Spanning the decades since, modern research and technology has made the concept a living reality. Duplicating living tissue and DNA is now possible through advances in science technology. The process is also not limited to just humans, crops are also subject to genetic engineering also. Whether or not the practice of cloning is morally or ethically correct, the practice of genetically engineering plants and humans will lead to abnormalities and will not be worth the risk.

Currently to date in 1997 a very famous sheep was born. Dolly was conceived using a single cell taken from another sheep and fused with a donor egg via electricity. No sexual intercourse took place. Originally known as 6ll3, Dolly was born at a research facility outside Edinburgh, Scotland after seven months of incubation time. The procedure was implemented by inserting a cell from an adult sheep's udder into a sheep egg and then placing it into a adult female sheep for development. This was the first successful cloning attempt after two hundred and seventy seven attempts. Even though the story made headlines, makes a person ponder what a waste of time and money after so many attempts. Some close observers say this may be the future of what is yet to come:

I think the last 10 years have shown that cloning is a difficult process to control, often goes wrong, and many of the reasons it goes wrong are probably inextricably tied up to the cloning process itself. I think that will pretty well seal the fate of cloning to make human beings. It will be understood the price will be too high. ( Lamb)

Dolly has changed the public perception of what biotechnology may be capable of, and has brought the next fear to the front of humans beings.

The battle begins over fears of what science may be capable of versus future medical development in organ replacement. Dr. Rudolph Jaenisch, a biologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, co- wrote a paper in 2001 for the journal, Science, writing his views for cloning as being very dangerous . Despite attempts to clone humans, there has been absolutely no progress achieved in the last six months to safely make a clone. Normal clones can not be made, there will always be deformities and most will die off early. For human reproduction cloning is not recommended. (Lamb, The Christian Science Monitor) Embryonic