Cloning
What is a Clone and Cloning Cloning of an Animal How Cloning is done
Human Cloning: Can it be done, should it be done?
Arguments against and in defense of human cloning
Adam and Eve were created by Cloning
The word Cloning is not in the Bible, but Cloning has many
biblical and moral repercussions, as well as scientific and social problems, specially the
possibility of cloning human beings. After many years of research most scientists
concluded that the cells of mature animal organisms are simply too specialized to be
cloned. However, in 1996, with the born of a cloned lamb, Dolly, it was found a way to do
the seemingly impossible…
... And since then, the possibility of a cloned human being is not a
mater of if but of when… most scientists think a human being can be
cloned, and it is just a matter of time to the fact that a human being will be cloned.
Clone is a group of genetically identical cells. The body of any animal or plant is a clone. Your body is a clone, because each cell of your body has exactly the same number of chromosomes, 46, arranged in the same 23 pairs of chromosomes, with exactly the same number and position of millions of genes in each chromosome. The cells of your brain are genetically identical as the cells of your skin or liver or kidney…
... Cancers, for example, are clones of cells inside an organism because they consist of many replicas of one mutated cell. If just one chromosome of one of your cells changes genetically because of radiation or stimulation or heat, that cell becomes genetically different to anyone else in your body, and that cell becomes a cancerous tumor when starts to multiply.
Clone is also an organism which is genetically an exact replica of another organism.
Singled-celled organisms, such as bacteria, protozoa, and yeast, usually reproduce clones asexually. Clones of these organisms are useful is research, for example to test drugs and other compounds, because all the test bacteria have the same genetic makeup, and any differences in effectiveness among the different drugs result from the drug itself and not from the bacteria which are exactly the same.
What is Cloning or Cloned:
Cloning is to duplicate a cell or an organism, usually asexually, which is genetically an exact replica of the other cell or organism. Cloned, is a cell or organism reproduced by cloning.
Algae, fungi, and plants like club mosses can reproduce sexually as well as asexually and can be cloned in the laboratory for research purposes.
Higher plants usually reproduce sexually and form seeds. However, many, if not all, higher plants can also reproduce asexually through a process called vegetative propagation, and so they can form clones. Farmers and gardeners raise desired apples, potatoes, and roses by means of cloning.
Hydras, flatworms, and other animals can be cloned through asexual reproduction or the process of regeneration.
Most higher animals form clones naturally only when identical twins occur.
In 1996 researches lead by Ian Wilmut of the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh, Scotland, cloned a sheep, from the mammary-cells of an adult sheep, and in July 1996, Dolly was born. This event marked the first time a mammal had been cloned.
As early as the 1950s scientists used the same technique to clone amphibians as frogs and salamanders.
How Cloning is done in animals:
The general technique is simple to understand: Let's take any adult animal, or you, for example, to make it easier to understand:
Step 1: Take any cell from your body, from the skin, for example.
Step 2: Take an egg cell (ovum), from the ovary of any woman.
Step 3: Take the nucleus out of the egg cell.
Step 4: Put together the cell of your skin and the egg without nucleus. It will start to multiply forming a microscopic ball of many identical cells.
Step 5: In about 6 days place it in the uterus of the woman.
Step 6: In 9 months a baby will be born just like you, an identical twin of you… without any genetic characteristics of the woman who gave the ovule and provided the uterus, and gave birth to your twin.
All this procedure is done in simple laboratory petri dishes, using the adequate nutrients in the dish to keep the cells alive. Wilmut used a cell from the mammary gland of an adult sheep and placed it on a petri dish that contained few nutrients, and by starving the cell forced it into a suspended state. In Step 4, he used an electric current to fuse the two cells, and since then, the nucleus of the donor (of your skin!), directed the functions of the new egg. In about 6 days the new cell had multiplied many times, forming dozens of new cells united in a microscopic ball.
In 1997, the Wisconsin scientists produced a calf cloning a body cell of a 30-day-old bull fetus (a developing embryo), at ABS Global Incorporated in DeForest, Wisconsin.
Despite the importance of the various cloning accomplishments announced in 1997 and 1998, none of them had achieved what the Roslin Institute researchers claimed to have achieved: The cloning of an adult sheep from an adult body cell. Because of this failure to duplicate the Dolly achievement, some scientists remained skeptical as to whether Dolly was in fact a clone of an adult animal. Much of this doubt was apparently laid to rest in July 1988, when biologists at the University of Hawaii announced that they had created more than 50 mice using adult cells, though these cells were taken from dormant cells that surround eggs in ovaries. So actually the Dolly achievement has not been duplicated yet, neither in the Roslin Institute nor in any other place.
And what about the Dolly sheep?: The Roslin scientists claim she is well, and that she gave birth to a healthy lamb in April 1998; this lamb was not a clone, but rather the offspring of a natural mating between Dolly and a male sheep.
Probably yes, but not in the near future, because even the achievement of the Roslin Institute has not been duplicated yet neither in the Roslin Institute nor in any other laboratory.
Should humans be cloned?:
A Time Magazine poll in March 10, 1997 reported that 74% of those asked believe it is against God's will to clone human beings.
Currently, human cloning is illegal in England and Norway, but not illegal in the US. However, in the US federal funds are prohibited from being used to clone human beings, but private funds are not prohibited.
We have to be careful with negative statements, because objections to
cloning human beings are similar to objections raised against previous scientific
achievements, for example, heart transplants and test-tube babies, that later came to be
widely accepted.
Arguments against and in defense of human cloning:
1- With the actual techniques many humans will come out severely deformed. Before there was Dolly, there were Disasters, reported the Washington Times on March 11, 1997. Cloning an adult sheep was extremely difficult to do. Over 270 attempts were needed before Dolly was born. Many fetal lambs did not survive the early stages of development, most of those carried to term were born with severe birth defects, and all of them but Dolly subsequently died. And the experiment of Dolly has not been duplicated in any laboratory since 1996.
2- What about the human soul?: In the test-tube babies the human
immortal soul is created and inserted by God at the moment of conception, when the sperm
and ovule unite, just like in any normal conception. In the possible human cloning, the
immortal human soul would be created and inserted by God at the moment of conception.
Adam and Eve were created by God
by Cloning.
3- Cloning is not playing God: Cloning merely produces life from existing life. Cloning can be thought of as an extension of procedures like in-vitro-fertilization.
4- Cloning could provide a genetically identical replacement for a lost loved one, or for a baby born with birth defect. Some people are already saving pieces of their skin or other organs to be cloned at later times, and also saving organs of loved one's. There are already several organ banks doing the job of freezing living organs for the future.
5- Cloning might lead to the creation of genetically engineered groups of people, like Hitler or Einstein, or athletes, or strong or beautiful people… it might lead to an attempt to improve the human race according to an arbitrary standard. And this might be true. However, identical twins or cloned humans do not result in equal human characteristics, because the environment and upbringing play a large role in shaping someone's emotions, character, and outlook. One clone raised in poverty, without education, with hunger and the sun of Africa, would be a totally different person that the clone raised in opulence, with good education, in Boston. The time and place of living are very important: A theoretical Einstein clone today would probably not become a world renowned physicist, and a Hitler clone living today in Indiana would most likely not grow up to start a new Holocaust.
6- Some may argue that a clone is against the traditional concept of family, or that he may have fewer rights than other people. However, a clone would be in the family as well as any other member, and he would have as much of a sense of individuality and rights as do identical twins.
7- No one could own a clone. Cloning is being considered as a future infertility remedy, and essentially, a clone would be made for the parents. People that predict a massive working underclass produced by cloning forget that despite the methods of their birth, clones would carry the same rights as a person produced through normal reproduction, as the test-tube babies do now.
Adam and Eve were created by Cloning:
Eve was cloned from Adam, from one of his ribs (Gen.2:2-23)... a difficult cloning to understand today, because from the cloning did not come another Adam, but Eve... another impossible cloning to understand with the science of today is the cloning of Adam himself from clay, from the dust of the ground!... and still another cloning hard to understand with the science of today is the cloning of Jesus from Mary, without the intervention of any man (Mat.1, Lk.1)...
Yes, God still keeps many mysteries from scientists... but the creation of Eve from a rib of Adam, since cloning, does not look anymore just a fairytale, but a real possibility made by God, by the Word!... and the conception of Jesus in Virgin Mary, without any man involved on it, looks now clearly a real possibility of God.
And, of course, the creation of the first man and woman is kind of a type of the conception of Jesus Christ.
Eve: And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. (Gen.2:21-23)... Eve was cloned from a rib of Adam. She was not conceived by the union of an spermatozoid with an ovule.
Adam: And the LORD God formed man of the dust of
the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living
soul. (Gen.2:7)... the "breath of life" is the "soul" created by
God and infused to Adam.