Advantages and Disadvantages of Cloning

Although lots of successful cloning had been done right after Dolly succeed back in 1996, there a lot of pros and cons regarding this cloning issue. The advantages of the cloning process are: (1) Beneficial to humans, other animals and agriculture in additional ways. In human for instance, development of tissue and organ transplantation in animal could decrease the problem of shortage suitable organ donor and avoid immunological response after transplant that cause rejection. The animal can be genetically designed and control to produce a tissue that are suitable to the recipient. Recently, research called xenotransplantation had been attempted to treat muscle rigidity and tremor in Parkinsonian patient. It is tested in rats where the Parkinson is improved by transplanting cloned transgenic bovine neurone into their brains.

On the other hand, the rat or any other animal can be genetically designed to expressed human disease and be able to serve as a medium to find a suitable treatment for certain diseases. Besides being beneficial for human, cloning also able to (2) preserve endangered species such as panda, tiger or even elephant that have low reproductive rates or being hunted illegally. (3) Lots of varieties. Whereas the cloning produce might create new species or new phenotypes which are different from the donor and it might as well create new usage in human life. (4) As we know, meat and milk is the great sources in our daily life. Through cloning, meat and milk production could be increase by cloning breeds that can produce milk twice from those born from traditional method. Furthermore, (5) vaccine is derived from animal. By cloning animals, there will be sufficient livestock to derived vaccine and provide sufficient vaccine to humankind.

Even after Dolly had been successfully cloned, lot of animals such as rat, cow and pig had undergoes cloning process. There are approximately 60% of fatality during fetal stage and 50% during neonatal stage. Even if the cloning process from adult cells might become efficient, there still would be cons/disadvantages in cloning process. Whereas, the donor might has exposed to the radiation, chemicals, aging, or errors in DNA replication which the (1) cancer are being transferred to the clone. Besides, if the cell transferred is healthy, there might be a (2) possible mutation to occur during cell culture which can result in changes in term of function of the cell or maybe lead to new diseases. (3) Next, the lifespan of the clone is unknown where it will lead to loss as the clone animal did not produce profit as we expect it will be. (4)

Therefore, there will be incompatibility from the new produced tissue or organ from the clone into the recipient which might lead to occurrence of new disease which urge the scientist to find the cure. (5) Furthermore, cloning process can be very expensive. Considering all tools, equipment and time spend compared to low successful rate, it is kind of wasted. (6) Cloning cause the animal to suffer. Reports show that surrogate mother were not mentally prepare and cloned animal have diseases and even high mortality rates. Besides, the size of the cloned animal might as well become abnormally large as they come from mature cells. On top of that, cloned animal also faced uncompleted renal development, hernia and others. For sure, cloning process had produced many defects animal than normal as it will result in animals to suffer. (7) Last but not least, Food and Drug Administration has concluded that eating meat or milk from cloned animals is safe. However, there might be some adverse effects.Though cloning animals might sound amazing. However, there is still lot of experiment must be done in order to make sure that cloning is safe.

Cite this page