Cut the Cloning: Why cloning should not be experimented in today’s society

Ever since I watched “Parent Trap” and “Twitches,” I’ve wanted a twin like I saw on the big screens — someone that likes online shopping as much as I do or who can relate to me when I say that I’m craving pizza at midnight. But now that cloning is becoming a reality in the current scientific research, I realize my dream of seeing double should never become a reality. Although switching classes is tempting, cloning isn’t an ethical solution.

Genetically modifying genes to make them suitable to someone else’s traits doesn’t seem sensical in today’s world, particularly when it comes to ethical values. The thing that makes each person their own, is their unique traits and personality, which would no longer exist in the case of human cloning. 

To recap a lesson in AP Biology 2, cloning an organism means removing the DNA (genetic material) out of one organism and implanting it into the egg cell of the desired clone. As the egg, implanted with DNA, becomes fertilized and developed, a replica organism is created.

Cloning has been tested and experimented on animals since the 1900’s, and the first successful mammal clone was Dolly the sheep in 1996. It worked because she survived from an implanted adult cell, whereas in animals before Dolly, the cloned cell didn’t survive.

Since then there have been many successful animal clonings, such as cows, sheep and dogs. Dolly’s triumph came after 277 attempts of non-surviving organisms beforehand. If there were this many deaths in animals, imagine the complications that could come from testing on humans.

There are specific state laws pertaining to human cloning and its restrictions when testing — California has a law that bans cloning for the intent of producing children, yet protects cloning experimentation for research purposes. This means that if a cloned human cell is produced, it would have to then be destroyed due to the reproduction law — defeating the purpose of the research even being done in the first place.

In Kansas there aren’t any laws that prohibit human cloning, meaning that anyone could experiment by any means they choose to — whether that be a 5-year-old elementary student or a molecular biologist.

For many scientists, the point of creating these clones is to gain more of an understanding in the field and use it for medical purposes like creating organs to aid people in need of transplants. But at what cost? It could help people theoretically, but the risks are too great to complete the research necessary for it to work.

Just in 2018, the first cloned monkeys were successfully created by using the process of nuclear transfer.  

The scary part is that human cloned cells have already been successfully created, but destroyed due to certain state laws. Experiments such as this are already being devised in the world and the idea that human clones may not be something just seen in movies, but in the near future is not so far fetched.

The idea of risking these failures and complications in humans is something that shouldn’t be attempted due to the undetermined repercussions like health defects, abnormalities and more. There is still a moral debate over if animal cloning is ethical, let alone the debate over cloning a person. 

A specific quirk or trait that you imagine when you think about somebody would no longer be unique to them. 

With humans, the process is much more complicated. It’s one thing to attempt cloning on an innocent mouse, but cloning a human is just a disaster waiting to happen. The inconsistent complications, including organism possible deaths or mutations associated with cloning outweigh the possible benefits.

It is undeniable that humans will eventually achieve successful human cloning, but only after the right research and means of doing so are found. I don’t know about you, but until then, I don’t want to be seeing double anytime soon.