So far I have been focusing on human genetic
engineering and cloning. Well today instead of focusing on humans I am going to
focus on animals. There have been plenty of advances when it comes to the cloning
and genetic alteration of animals. I was doing a little research on the subject
and ran across a few interesting articles.
Before I go into what I came across in my research I
want to focus on the question: what would we gain out of cloning animals? A few
pros would be:
-
We could produce more livestock for
consumption
-
We could help endangered species, so
basically animal conservation
-
We could make new breakthroughs with
animal cloning which can help with human cloning and medical breakthroughs
Although, the list above doesn’t sound all that bad
there are still a few negative outcomes when it comes to cloning itself and
cloning for livestock consumption.
I was reading an article written by DN Wells were he
mention a few negative outcomes of first generation clones. For example, first
generation clones usually don’t make it either due to miscarriages or to other
complications after they are born. Now the question arises, if we would be okay
with consuming animals that have such complications? Would consuming these animals
have any negative effects on the consumer? I for one am not completely
convinced about consuming a clone. But then again that’s me. Others might be
okay with it. For those who are not completely convinced about consuming animal
clones it might be reassuring that the offspring produced from two clones come
out normal and with no complications unlike the first generation clones. I
think I would be more open to consuming a second generation clone than a first
generation one (Sorry to those of you who are vegetarians and vegans). Now is
it morally correct to clone animals for our own benefit? I haven’t really taken
a side on that yet. I guess it would help if we looked at it from a person’s
perspective. I don’t think many people would be okay with cloning people to
reap some benefit out of it.
I did say I was going to focus on animals for this
post but I am going to deviate a little and toss medical advancements into the
mix. By continuing with animal genetic engineering and cloning there can be
some great medical advancements that can be very beneficial. But, the issue of
it being correct or not rises again. And the debate continues! It is going to
be hard to decide what side to take when the knowledge is out there that a lot
of good can come out of something that is viewed as morally wrong.
Just as a last remark, I do have to say that I don’t
see anything wrong with using cloning and genetic engineering to preserve
animals that are close to extinction. Just putting out there. I actually think
it is pretty cool although by doing that it could alter the eco life those
animals belong to. Who knows, that is something else to look into…
I hope you found this post somewhat interesting.
Feel free to comment and share your thoughts!
If you would like to look into the topic of animal
cloning and genetics a bit more in depth refer to the citations below for a
couple of articles I read that inspired this blog post.
Wells, DN (2005), "Animal cloning:
problems and prospects", Revue scientifique et technique (International Office of
Epizootics) (0253-1933), 24 (1), p. 251.
Y. Tsunoda, Y. Kato, “Recent progress and problems
in animal cloning”, Differentiation, Volume 69, Issues 4–5, January 2002, Pages
158-161
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