Therapeutic Cloning: Preamble

Today, critics of cloning and all that oppose the idea also have a distaste for therapeutic cloning, despite the advantages it presents. If it were made possible, scientists and doctors could save patients with life altering conditions. There is only one catch; as of right now, it seems highly inconceivable because of the extreme difficulty in the process. The steps are the same for regular cloning, except it would not produce an entire clone, only a stem cell to place into the patient. As noted in my previous post, it took 267 attempts to make Dolly the sheep. Based on this, it is accurate to say that it would take at least 100 donor eggs from humans for each patient. With that in mind, to treat all the hundreds of millions of people that would benefit from this it would take billions of eggs. That is quite a ridiculous number. In addition, since these numbers are based off results we have had from cloning animals in which research has been done, it's safe to say it would take even more eggs than that. This is why a majority of the population want this banned before it is pursued. It is possibly unachievable, and in many ways seems like something that could only be obtained in a near perfect world.

I am in the majority group. I think that there is no way that many donations would ever come, and that makes this a fantasy therapy. In my eyes, it shouldn't be taken seriously.

Are you in the same group as me? Do you think there is any way a group of common people can do anything about this?



Smith, Wesley. "Therapeutic Cloning of Human Embryos Should be Banned." At Issue: Human Embryo Experimentation. 2006. Opposing Viewpoints. Greenhaven Press. 11 June 2009