What are the pros and cons of therapeutic cloning?
What Are The Pros And Cons Of Therapeutic Cloning
- Amazed by Cloning. Cloning is an amazing complex thing! ...
- Animal Cloning Controversy. ...
- Reproductive Vs Therapeutic Cloning Research. ...
- Should Human Cloning Be Pursued? ...
- Cloning Ethical Dilemmas. ...
- Cloning Pros And Cons Of Cloning
What is the difference between reproductive and therapeutic cloning?
• Therapeutic cloning does not produce a whole new copy of an organism but a copy of a part of an organism mainly an organ or tissue. But reproductive cloning produces a whole new copy of an organism. • Therapeutic cloning is used for medical treatment purposes, and reproductive cloning is used for reproductive purposes.
What is therapeutic cloning definition?
Therapeutic cloning: Cloning designed as therapy for a disease. In therapeutic cloning, the nucleus of a cell, typically a skin cell, is inserted into a fertilized egg whose nucleus has been removed. The nucleated egg begins to divide repeatedly to form a blastocyst.
Is therapeutic cloning legal?
Therapeutic cloning should be legal in the United States, because of all the possible medical and scientific advancements, including the treatment and cures to many diseases.
Is cloning and stem cell research the same?
Stem cells are cells that can replicate and can turn into any of some variety of cells. Potentially, stem cells may be useful in replenishing missing or defective cell populations in an organism. Cloning (in this context) involves growing a new organism from a single cell of an old organism.
Is therapeutic cloning stem cells?
Therapeutic cloning, also called somatic cell nuclear transfer, is a technique to create versatile stem cells independent of fertilized eggs. In this technique, the nucleus is removed from an unfertilized egg. This nucleus contains the genetic material. The nucleus is also removed from the cell of a donor.
What is another name for therapeutic cloning?
Therapeutic cloning is sometimes referred to as "somatic cell nuclear transfer" or "SCNT".
How are therapeutic cloning and stem cells creation related?
Stem cells prepared from human embryos created by cloning techniques can be used to overcome the problems of immune rejection that hamper transplanted organs. In this case a patient with a heart muscle problem receives heart muscle cells to repair the damage.
Why are stem cells used in therapeutic cloning?
The main purpose of embryonic stem cell cloning techniques would be to create tissue that would not be subject to graft rejection.
What are the three types of stem cell therapies?
Stem Cells Used or Targeted by Cell Therapy. Stem cells used or targeted by cell therapy can be grouped into three categories: pluripotent stem cells (PSCs), adult stem cells (ASCs), and cancer stem cells (CSCs).
What is therapeutic cloning in simple terms?
What is therapeutic cloning? Therapeutic cloning involves creating a cloned embryo for the sole purpose of producing embryonic stem cells with the same DNA as the donor cell. These stem cells can be used in experiments aimed at understanding disease and developing new treatments for disease.
What is meant by therapeutic cloning?
Therapeutic cloning is the transfer of nuclear material isolated from a somatic cell into an enucleated oocyte in the goal of deriving embryonic cell lines with the same genome as the nuclear donor.
Can you clone a human from stem cells?
A patient transplanted with these cells would not suffer the problems associated with rejection. To date, no human embryonic stem cell lines have been derived using therapeutic cloning, so both these possibilities remain very much in the future.
Can stem cells be rejected in therapeutic cloning?
Adult stem cell transplants could use a patient's own stem cells or be from a donor. Those that use the patient's own stem cells would be genetically identical and would not be rejected by the patient's immune system. Those from a donor would not be genetically identical.
What is therapeutic cloning and why is it considered controversial?
Therapeutic cloning is controversial because isolating the stem cells from the embryo destroys it. Many individuals regard the human embryo as a person with moral rights, and so they consider its destruction to be morally impermissible.
What are the 3 main sources of stem cells for human therapeutic cloning?
Stem cells can be derived from one of three sources: Embryos (may be specially created by therapeutic cloning) Umbilical cord blood or placenta of a new-born baby. Certain adult tissues like the bone marrow (cells are not pluripotent)
What is a therapeutic cloning?
Therapeutic cloning is the transfer of nuclear material isolated from a somatic cell into an enucleated oocyte in the goal of deriving embryonic cell lines with the same genome as the nuclear donor.
What is a therapeutic use of stem cells?
Stem cell therapy is a form of regenerative medicine designed to repair damaged cells within the body by reducing inflammation and modulating the immune system. This phenomenon makes stem cell therapy a viable treatment option for a variety of medical conditions.
Does therapeutic cloning use embryonic stem cells?
Therapeutic cloning creates a line of embryonic stem cells genetically identical to an individual. Reproductive cloning creates a new organism genetically identical to an individual.
Can stem cells be rejected in therapeutic cloning?
Adult stem cell transplants could use a patient's own stem cells or be from a donor. Those that use the patient's own stem cells would be genetically identical and would not be rejected by the patient's immune system. Those from a donor would not be genetically identical.
How can genetic material be used to make a human clone?
Taking the genetic material from a human adult's cell, placing it inside a human egg and allowing it to grow could lead to the birth of a human clone. If technicians want to they could dismantle the developing embryo after a few days and gather cells. These cells have the potential of being used to generate tissue cultures and maybe even organs that could treat diseases in either the original donor adult or others. Many people, however, are anxious that this would be an unethical use of human embryos and claim that alternative approaches need to be explored.
What are the two important questions to be addressed before deciding whether to approve of research into human cloning and?
However, at least two important questions need to be addressed before deciding whether to approve of research into human cloning and embryonic stem cell technology. First, can we accept the cloning of humans, and secondly, should we protect early human embryos from techniques that will destroy them?
Why use adult stem cells?
Using adult-derived stem cells avoids many of the ethical problems associated with embryonic cells. The patient's own cells are being reprogrammed to become another tissue type, and no one is harmed in the process.
Why are stem cells used in transplants?
Stem cells prepared from human embryos created by cloning techniques can be used to overcome the problems of immune rejection that hamper transplanted organs. In this case a patient with a heart muscle problem receives heart muscle cells to repair the damage.
How many embryos are needed for stem cell research?
Experimentation on human embryos. To develop embryo-derived stem cell techniques will require the use of hundreds or thousands of human embryos. The embryos will be grown in dishes before dismantling them into individual cells. Although some of the embryo's cells live on, the embryo itself is destroyed in the procedure.
What is the purpose of stem cells?
Using a person's own stem cells to repair damaged tissue. The use of adult stem cells to repair damaged tissue, in this case the heart. This technique is much simpler than the cloning of human embryo stem cells and avoids the ethical problems. In October 2000 it was reported that this technique was successful in treating a patient who had heart ...
What are stem cells?
Stem cells are a vital part of the body's make-up. These cells can grow into one or more different types of tissue and are involved in the normal maintenance of the body and tissue repair after damage.
How did stem cells turn into cartilage?
First, researchers prodded the stem cells , with appropriate chemicals, nutrients, and growth hormones, to turn into cells capable of producing cartilage and bone. Then they separated the cells into two layers and poured them into a mold created by the jaw bone of a human cadaver.
What is the process of cloning embryos?
Most clones are created through a process called "somatic cell nuclear transfer.". Essentially, a scientist uses a tiny needle to pull DNA material from the nucleus of a donor cell and transfer it into a hollow egg.
What can stem cells do?
Think of an embryonic stem cell as a kind of master cell, an early-stage cell that retains the ability to form almost any kind of cell or tissue type in the human body . With a little chemical encouragement, a stem cell can turn into a new heart muscle for a heart attack victim; new neurons for stroke, paralysis or Parkinson's patients; or new insulin-secreting pancreas cells for diabetics. Down the road, scientists believe it will be possible to create such complicated structures as blood vessels, liver tissue, and whole kidneys. In fact, ACT scientists have already succeeded in building tiny cow kidneys that could be used for kidney transplants. It isn't hard to envision, Lanza says, a future where pretty much any kind of organ or tissue could be engineered to replace those damaged by age, injury, or disease.
What is Act technology?
ACT is one of the very few private companies in the United States that kept working on stem cell research after the U.S. government dried up federal funds for the procedure.
Why do scientists destroy embryos?
Instead of implanting the resulting embryo into a female host, as would be done in reproductive cloning, scientists destroy the embryo so that researchers can extract the stem cells. Stem cells are pluripotent; they have the potential to form any cell or tissue in the human body. They are master cells, capable of morphing into cells in the brain, muscles, or other organs, and which might be used for medical treatment.
Where are adult stem cells found?
Generally, adult stem cells - that is, stem cells found in bone cartilage - aren't as versatile as stem cells harvested from embryonic tissue. But this study suggests adult stem cells may be more useful than previously thought.
When did Lanza and his fellow scientists make an announcement?
In January 2004, Lanza and his fellow scientists at ACT made an announcement: They had succeeded in bringing a human embryo to the point of 100 cells through a technique called parthenogenesis. This was important news.
How is the nucleus of an egg cell replaced?
In this procedure, the nucleus of an egg cell is removed and replaced by the nucleus of a cell from another adult. In Dolly’s case, the cell came from the mammary gland of an adult ewe. This nucleus contained that ewe’s DNA. After being inserted into the egg, the adult cell nucleus is reprogrammed by the host cell. The egg is artificially stimulated to divide and behave in a similar way to an embryo fertilised by sperm. After many divisions in culture, this single cell forms a blastocyst (an early stage embryo with about 100 cells) with almost identical DNA to the original donor who provided the adult cell – a genetic clone.
What is the process of cloning a lamb called?
Reproductive cloning . To produce Dolly, the cloned blastocyst was transferred into the womb of a recipient ewe, where it developed and when born quickly became the world’s most famous lamb. When the cloning process is used in this way, to produce a living duplicate of an existing animal, it is commonly called reproductive cloning .
What is cloning in stem cell research?
What is cloning, and what does it have to do with stem cell research? Cloning, or somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), is the technique used to produce Dolly the sheep, the first animal to be produced as a genetic copy of another adult. In this procedure, the nucleus of an egg cell is removed and replaced by the nucleus ...
How many cells are in a blastocyst?
After many divisions in culture, this single cell forms a blastocyst (an early stage embryo with about 100 cells) with almost identical DNA to the original donor who provided the adult cell – a genetic clone. At this stage, cloning can go one of two ways: Reproductive cloning.
What is the long term hope for therapeutic cloning?
Another long-term hope for therapeutic cloning is that it could be used to generate cells that are genetically identical to a patient. A patient transplanted with these cells would not suffer the problems associated with rejection.
Where are embryonic stem cells isolated?
Instead, embryonic stem cells are isolated from the cloned blastocyst. These stem cells are genetically matched to the donor organism, holding promise for studying genetic disease. For example, stem cells could be generated using the nuclear transfer process described above, with the donor adult cell coming from a patient with diabetes ...
Is cloning in humans illegal?
This form of cloning is unrelated to stem cell research. In most countries, it is illegal to attempt reproductive cloning in humans. In therapeutic cloning, the blastocyst is not transferred to a womb.
Why is the embryo destroyed?
The embryo is destroyed to obtain embryonic stem cells that have the same genotype as the patient. These cells can be cultured indefinitely, and hormonally induced to form new tissues and organs that will not be rejected by the patient’s immune system.
What is the stage of embryo cloning?
In reproductive cloning, this early-stage embryo is implanted into the uterus of a surrogate mother. In therapeutic cloning, the early-stage embryo is disaggregated to recover and culture embryonic stem cells. Image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cloning_diagram_english.svg cc-by-sa-3.0. Early studies with enucleated frog eggs ...
What cells do not form pollen?
Early experiments with cloning plants showed that individual somatic cells (cells that do not form pollen or egg) could form complete, new clonal plants, indicating that the somatic cells had no irreversible changes in their genome compared to the original fertilized egg cell.
What is the name of the technique used to clone a vertebrate?
The first studies to test whether vertebrate animals could be cloned used a technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), where nuclei from somatic cells were transferred to an egg cell whose own nucleus had been removed. Somatic cell nuclear transfer, from Wikipedia.
What is the transfer of a somatic cell into an egg cell?
Somatic cell nuclear transfer, from Wikipedia. Transfer of a nucleus from a differentiated somatic cell into an enucleated egg cell creates a one-cell embryo that is genetically identical to the donor of the so matic cell nucleus.
How many transcription factors are in embryonic stem cells?
These cells, created by transforming adult differentiated cells (such as fibroblasts or skin cells) with 4-6 different transcription factors that regulate early embryonic cell growth and differentiation, have many of the properties of embryonic stem cells.
What are the cells that regenerate?
The human body is quite limited in its ability to regenerate or repair injuries or diseases that affect critical organs such as the brain, heart, and pancreas. Tissue and organ regeneration and gene therapy require a source of cells that can differentiate into the desired types of cells, for the life of the patient. Adult humans have distinct reservoirs of stem cells, located in different parts of the body (such as the bone marrow). Stem cells, by definition, can continue to divide and both replace themselves and produce progeny cells that differentiate into new blood and immune system cells, or skin cells, or cells that line the gut and airways, or muscle cells. But these adult stem cells are difficult to obtain from a patient, and they are restricted in the types of cells or tissues they can form. For example, the stem cells in the bone marrow can generate both white and red blood cells, but not skin cells or new brain cells or heart muscle or pancreatic beta islet cells (to cure diabetes).
Why did MacKinnon favor a continuing ban on the latter?
MacKinnon favored a continuing ban on the latter, citing safety concerns. Regarding therapeutic cloning and stem cell research, she criticized consequentialist views such as that anything can be done to reduce human suffering and that certain embryos would perish anyway.
What is California cloning?
The Ethics of Human Cloning and Stem Cell Research. "California Cloning: A Dialogue on State Regulation" was convened October 12, 2001, by the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. Its purpose was to bring together experts from the fields of science, religion, ethics, and law to discuss how the state ...
How long does it take for an embryo to reach gastrulation?
The embryos have not reached gastrulation (prior to 14 to 18 days of development).
What is the moral status of embryos?
This status does entitle the embryo to some protection. In Nelson’s view, the gamete sources whose egg and sperm created these embryos have a unique connection to them and should have exclusive control over their disposition. If the gamete sources agree, Nelson believes the embryos can be used for research if they are treated respectfully. Some manifestations of respect might be:
What does Carbone argue about stem cell research?
As far as stem cell research is concerned, Carbone argued that the larger the investment in such research, the bigger the carrot--the more the funder would be able to regulate the process. That, she suggested, argues for a government role in the funding.
Why was organ transplantation opposed?
When organ transplantation was first introduced, it was opposed as a violation of the principal, "First, do no harm" and as a mutilation of the human body. Later, the issue was reconceived in terms of charity and concern for others.
What does Billings believe about stem cell research?
Billings also believes that the benefits of stem cell therapies have been "wildly oversold." Currently, he argues, there are no effective treatments coming from this research. He is also concerned about how developing abilities in nuclear transfer technology may have applications in germ-line genetic engineering that we do not want to encourage. As a result, he favors the current go-slow approach of banning the creation of new cell lines until some therapies have been proven effective. At the same time, he believes we must work to better the situation of the poor and marginalized so their access to all therapies is improved.
Conventional Limitations
Repairing Organs
- Stem cells are a vital part of the body's make-up. These cells can grow into one or more different types of tissue and are involved in the normal maintenance of the body and tissue repair after damage. Early embryos contain embryonic stem cells that could potentially form almost any tissue of the body if they are removed and grown in a laboratory under the right conditions.
Ethical Perspectives
- Developing treatments for terrible illnesses is undoubtedly a worthy aim. Both patient support-groups and research scientists are keen to get approval to proceed with research on cloning and human embryonic stem cells with the goal of repairing damaged tissues. However, at least two important questions need to be addressed before deciding whether to approve of research into h…
Cloning Humans
- Genetically identical individuals do occur naturally. So in some ways identical twins are equivalent to clones because they share the same genetic make-up. Scientists can now clone mammals. Their first attempts at cloning were restricted to using genetic material (DNA) from embryos, but the birth of Dolly the sheep in July 1996 showed that clones could be generated by using the DN…
Experimentation on Human Embryos
- To develop embryo-derived stem cell techniques will require the use of hundreds or thousands of human embryos. The embryos will be grown in dishes before dismantling them into individual cells. Although some of the embryo's cells live on, the embryo itself is destroyed in the procedure. One source of embryos for research would be the 'spare embryos' generated in fertility treatmen…
Something Or someone?
- A key issue in deciding our view on the use of human embryos is whether we view the embryo as merely a 'thing', a potential person, or actual person. If we believe that to be a person we have to have a certain set of abilities, for example, be able to relate to other people, be able to feel, be able to communicate, the question seems straightforward. The early embryo has none of these …
Alternative Approaches
- Given that research on embryonic stem cells present so many ethical dilemmas, it is worth looking for alternative approaches. Stem cells that are able to regenerate tissues are not only found in embryos. Adults also have stem cells in many tissues, which replace the cells that are lost from that tissue throughout life. For example the millions of cells that are lost every day from the bloo…
Conclusion
- Recent advances in cell biology have made the repair of tissues damaged by disease, using stem cells, an exciting possibility. However, a great deal of research will need to be done in order to develop either embryonic or adult stem cell treatments to the stage where they may be of benefit to patients. Whether the development of embryonic stem cell treatment using cloning is ethically …
Learning Objectives
- Describe the basic procedure for cloning vertebrate animals via somatic cell nuclear transfer to enucleated eggs
- Discuss the difficulties and obstacles, both technical and ethical, for the use of animal cloning
- Compare and contrast “therapeutic” cloning versus reproductive cloning
- Describe the procedure for obtaining embryonic stem cells
Reproductive Cloning
- Many organisms, such as bacteria and archaea, and diverse eukaryotes, reproduce asexually. Asexual reproduction results in progeny that are genetically identical to the parent, meaning that they are “clones” of the parent. Most complex, multicellular eukaryotes, however, reproduce only sexually. Two haploid gametes unite to form a diploid cell, called a zygote, that reproduces mitot…
Adult Stem Cells
- The human body is quite limited in its ability to regenerate or repair injuries or diseases that affect critical organs such as the brain, heart, and pancreas. Tissue and organ regeneration and gene therapy require a source of cells that can differentiate into the desired types of cells, for the life of the patient. Adult humans have distinct reservoirs of stem cells, located in different parts of the b…
Embryonic Stem Cells and Therapeutic Cloning
- Cells in an early human embryo, however, are “totipotent or pluripotent” – they can form any part of the human body. Such cells can be cultured indefinitely as embryonic stem cell lines. Existing human embryonic stem cell lines have been derived from in-vitro fertilized, early-stage human embryos, that would have perished without implantation into a uterus. These were “surplus” or “…
Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells
- In the last decade, genetic engineering technology has been used to create a new type of stem cell: induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). These cells, created by transforming adult differentiated cells (such as fibroblasts or skin cells) with 4-6 different transcription factors that regulate early embryonic cell growth and differentiation, have many of the properties of embryoni…
Stem Cell Therapy
- Stem cells, depending on whether they were obtained from adults, embryos, or induced with transcription factors, can be induced to differentiate into different cell types to generate replacement organs and repair damaged heart muscle, pancreatic beta cells, spinal cord or brain cells. Coupled with genome editing, stem cells could be used to treat patients with genetic disor…