The goals and purposes for cloning range from making copies of those that have deceased to better engineering the offspring in humans and animals. Cloning could also directly offer a means of curing diseases or a technique that could extend means to acquiring new data for the sciences of embryology and how organisms develop as a whole over time. Currently, the agricultural industry demands nuclear transfer to produce better livestock. Cloning could massively improve the agricultural industry as the technique of nuclear transfer improves. Currently, change in the phenotype of livestock is accomplished by bombarding embryos of livestock with genes that produce livestock with preferred traits. However, this technique is not efficient as only 5 percent of the offspring express the traits. Scientists can easily genetically alter adult cells. Thus, cloning from an adult cell would make it easier to alter the genetic material.
The goal of transgenic livestock is to produce livestock with ideal characteristics for the agricultural industry and to be able to manufacture biological products such as proteins for humans. Farmers are attempting to produce transgenic livestock already, but not efficiently, due to the minimal ability to alter embryos genetically, as stated above. Researchers can harvest and grow adult cells in large amounts compared to embryos. Scientists can then genetically alter these cells and find which ones did transform and then clone only those cells.
Scientists also ponder the idea of cloning endangered species to increase their population. The possibilities are endless. However, we are actually doing much of this research for the improvement of life for humans. Scientists foresee the cloning of pigs that will produce organs that will not be rejected by humans. Also, as mentioned earlier, livestock can produce biological proteins helping people who have diseases including diabetes, Parkinson's, and Cystic Fibrosis. Cloning also provides better research capabilities for finding cures to many diseases. There are also possibilities that nuclear transfer could provide benefits to those who would like children. For instance, couples who are infertile, or have genetic disorders, could use cloning to produce a child. Equally important, women who are single could have a child using cloning instead of in-vitro fertilization or artificial insemination. Nuclear transfer could also provide children who need organ transplants to have a clone born to donate organs. Cloning could also provide a copy of a child for a couple whose child had died.
WHAT ARE THE NEGATIVES OF CLONING?
The biggest problem with the use of cloning on a large is scale is the decline in genetic diversity. Think about it, if everyone has the same genetic material, what happens if we lose the ability to clone. We would have to resort to natural reproduction, causing us to inbreed, which will cause many problems. Also, if a population of organisms has the same genetic information, then the disease would wipe out the entire population. Helping endangered species by cloning will not help the problem. Currently, zoologists and environmentalists trying to save endangered species are not so much having trouble keeping population numbers up, but not having any animals to breed that are not cousins. The technique of nuclear transfer is also early in its developmental stages. Thus, errors are occurring when scientists carry out the procedure. For instance, it took 277 tries to produce Dolly, and Roslin scientists produced many lambs with abnormalities. If we tried to clone endangered species we could possibly kill the last females integral to the survival of a species. This may be the main reason science is holding out on cloning humans.
Other arguments for cloning include if we are taking nature into our own hands by cloning animals or people. People question when we will draw the line for getting involved in natural events. Religious organizations consider nuclear transfer to cause men to be reproductively obsolete. This claim was deduced by gathering of the information that cloning requires only oocytes, any cell, and a woman to develop in. They also claim that cloning does not respect the fact that humans have souls. They also consider cloning unnatural, and say we are taking the work of God into our own hands. There is also a debate as to the moral rights of clones. Some say their rights will be defied because clones are not granted the birth of newness. That we would not receive clones with such excitement as a child of a couple who conceived naturally. If natural reproduction were to occur, genetic variation would occur. They say cloning would deprive a person of uniqueness. They argue that identical twins are not unique from each other, but that they are new in genetic variation and unique from anything that came before them. People also wonder what mental and emotional problems would result if a clone were to find out that he or she was cloned.