The Evaluation of Five Websites about Cloning Based on Their Credibility and Support by Peer-Reviewed Articles
The Evaluation of five Websites about Cloning based on their Credibility and support by peer-reviewed Articles
Introduction Ever since the birth of the first cloned sheep, named Dolly, the dream of human cloning has existed (Van Dijck, 1999). Cloning a mammal is described as the manipulation of an animal or human cell in order to create an identical copy of that animal’s or human’s nucleic DNA (Andrews, 1997). Though the dream of a human clone also comes with a lot of controversy regarding ethics and morals. Embryotic stem cell research, which could lead to a renewable source of human tissue, cells and eventually entire organs (Bowring, 2004), is highly controversial due to the necessity of placing a cloned embryo into a woman’s body in order to achieve that research. Politicians differentiate between therapeutic cloning and reproductive cloning as they refer to the second as “implanting a cloned embryo in a woman's womb” (Bowring, 2004), as for the embryo itself the research is not very therapeutic. Furthermore cloning by transfer of nuclei is not very effective yet as only 1% of manipulated sheep eggs reach adulthood and the number is even lower for other animals (Solter, 2000). The question whether human cloning will ever be possible and ethical remains to be answered but it seems certain that extra research in embryotic stem cells will improve techniques and success rates, which eventually brings the realization of a human clone closer one step at a time.
Ranking Table I ranked the five websites: “Dogs Cloned From Adult Somatic Cells”, “Human Cloning”, “Clones: A Hard Act to Follow”, “Cloning Fact Sheet” and “Dream Tech International Clones-R-Us” from 1 to 5, where 1 is most accurate and suitable website and 5 is the poorest website.
|1 |Dogs Cloned from Adult Somatic CELLS |
|2
Introduction Ever since the birth of the first cloned sheep, named Dolly, the dream of human cloning has existed (Van Dijck, 1999). Cloning a mammal is described as the manipulation of an animal or human cell in order to create an identical copy of that animal’s or human’s nucleic DNA (Andrews, 1997). Though the dream of a human clone also comes with a lot of controversy regarding ethics and morals. Embryotic stem cell research, which could lead to a renewable source of human tissue, cells and eventually entire organs (Bowring, 2004), is highly controversial due to the necessity of placing a cloned embryo into a woman’s body in order to achieve that research. Politicians differentiate between therapeutic cloning and reproductive cloning as they refer to the second as “implanting a cloned embryo in a woman's womb” (Bowring, 2004), as for the embryo itself the research is not very therapeutic. Furthermore cloning by transfer of nuclei is not very effective yet as only 1% of manipulated sheep eggs reach adulthood and the number is even lower for other animals (Solter, 2000). The question whether human cloning will ever be possible and ethical remains to be answered but it seems certain that extra research in embryotic stem cells will improve techniques and success rates, which eventually brings the realization of a human clone closer one step at a time.
Ranking Table I ranked the five websites: “Dogs Cloned From Adult Somatic Cells”, “Human Cloning”, “Clones: A Hard Act to Follow”, “Cloning Fact Sheet” and “Dream Tech International Clones-R-Us” from 1 to 5, where 1 is most accurate and suitable website and 5 is the poorest website.
|1 |Dogs Cloned from Adult Somatic CELLS |
|2
References: Andrews, L.B. 1997. Is there a right to clone? Constitutional challenges to bans on human cloning. Harvard Journal of Law and Technology. 11(3): 647-676. Bowring, F. (2004). Therapeutic and reproductive cloning: a critique. Social Science & Medicine, 58(2), 401. doi:10.1016/S0277-9536(03)00206-5 Canada. Health Canada.2004. Human Cloning [online]. Available from http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hl-vs/reprod/hc-sc/legislation/clon-eng.php [accessed February 13 2012]. D. Solter (2000), “Mammalian cloning: advances and limitations,” Nature Reviews Genetics, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 199–207, 2000. Lee, B.C., Kim, M.K., Jang, J., Oh, H.J., Yuda, F., Kim, H.J., Shamin, M.H., Kim, J.J., Kang, S.K., Schatten, G., and Hwang, W.S. 2005. Dogs cloned from adult somatic cell. Nature. 436:641.doi: 10.1038/436641a. Levine, Aaron D. (January 2009). "Animal cloning in the twenty-first century". Cloning. World Issues Today. Rosen Publishing Group. p. 77. ISBN 1435851684. No Author.1997.Dream Tech International - Clones R Us [online]. http://www.jbcorps.com/clones/index.html [accessed 28 February 2012]. Pennisi, E., and Vogel, G. 2000. Clones: A hard act to follow. Science.288 (5472):1722-1727.doi:10.1126/science.288.547.1722. U.S. Department of Energy Genome Program 's Biological and Environmental Research Information System.2009.Cloning Fact Sheet [online]. Available from http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/cloning.shtml [accessed 14 February 2012]. Van Dijck, J. (1999). Cloning humans, cloning literature: genetics and the imagination deficit. New Genetics & Society, 18(1), 9.