Human Cloning For Transplants
Human cloning may be moving one step closer to reality. Dr. Emily Senay visited The Early Show, on Tuesday to tell us about reports that Britain may consider lifting a ban on the cloning of human embryos for research purposes.
In 1997 Dolly the sheep was born the first cloned mammal and there followed a string of cloning breakthroughs including monkeys and mice. Now the science has been taken further with genetically designed goats and cows that produce new drugs in their milk, and genetically modified pigs that might someday be a source of organs for transplantation.
A panel of scientific experts in England is said to be filing a report to persuade the British government and the public that the benefits of cloning human embryos for use in research far outweighs any ethical dilemmas.
They would like to see the cloned embryos used to develop tissues and organs for transplant. The idea would be to grow that person a new heart using cells taken from a cloned embryo.
How It Would Work
They would take a donated human egg and remove the original genetic material and replace it with genetic material from the person who needs the heart. The egg would then be stimulated to begin dividing. What you have at this stage is a human clone. If it kept growing in theory it would be an exact copy of the DNA donor.
But instead of letting it grow, doctors would extract a special cell called a stem cell, which has a natural ability to transform into a heart cell or a liver cell or whatever cell you need. In this case, the idea would be to stimulate the stem cell to become a heart cell and grow a new heart.
Benefits
The heart would be a perfect match so there would be no problem of rejection. And clearly this could be an answer to the profound organ shortage. Scientists could create a new heart, liver, lung, kidney and also possibly tissues like nerves, blood, or brain cells.
Ethical Questions
After a doctor extracts the cell he needs, the embryo is destroyed. Many believe that an embryo represents human life and creating a clone and then destroying it is tantamount to murder.
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