Human Cloning
All of the cloning with animals has made human cloning a real
possibility.Most scientists agree that human cloning poses a
serious risk of producing children who are stillborn, unhealthy,
severely malformed or disabled.
Additional scientific problems with human cloning such as the
potential for mutation, transmission of mitochondrial diseases,
and the negative effects from the aging genetic material.
There are also many possible benefuts to human
cloning. Below are a few.
Leukemia:
We should be able to clone the bone marrow
for children and adults suffering from leukemia. This is expected
to be one of the first benefits to come from cloning technology.
Rejuvenation:
Dr. Richard Seed, one of the leading proponents
of human cloning technology, suggests that it may someday be
possible to reverse the aging process because of what we learn
from cloning. Human cloning technology could be used to reverse
heart attacks. Scientists believe that they may be able to treat
heart attack victims by cloning their healthy heart cells and
injecting them into the areas of the heart that have been damaged.
Heart disease is the number one killer in the United States
and several other industrialized countries.There has been a
breakthrough with human stem cells.
Infertility:
With cloning, infertile couples could have children.
Despite getting a fair amount of publicity in the news current
treatments for infertility, in terms of percentages, are not
very successful. One estimate is that current infertility treatments
are less than 10 percent successful. Couples go through physically
and emotionally painful procedures for a small chance of having
children. Many couples run out of time and money without successfully
having children. Human cloning could make it possible for many
more infertile couples to have children than ever before possible.
Liver failure:
We may be able to clone livers for liver transplants
Kidney failure:
We may be able to clone kidneys for kidney transplants
Cancer:
We may learn how to switch cells on and off through cloning
and thus be able to cure cancer. Scientists still do not know
exactly how cells differentiate into specific kinds of tissue,
nor to they understand why cancerous cells lose their differentiation.
Cloning, at long last, may be the key to understanding differentiation
and cancer.
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