Cloning What?
Printed February 9, 2005 in The Plain Dealer, Thomas Wagner writes in the article, “Britain OKs Cloning Human Embryos” and indicates that British regulators have raised controversy between religious groups and scientists by granting a second cloning license for the study of human embryos. The license was given to Ian Wilmut, the man who successfully cloned Dolly the sheep. Wagner says that Wilmut is not planning to clone babies, but he is using the stem cells from human embryos. The master cells are called stem cells and they can only be manipulated at this early state to form any desired cell. Wilmut plans to study nerve cells, and how they go wrong to cause diseases known as motor nutrition disease. This is serious and causes a loss of nerves that lead to muscle failure and enables patients to move. People do not live very long with this, and the causes of it are unknown worldwide. Wilmut hopes to make a cell form that will help treat the diseases that are untreatable today. He plans to clone the embryos from patients with the disease using a technique called “cell nuclear replacement” to find a cause and bring useful treatment for the disease such as this Lou Gehrigs disease (the most common motor nutrition disease) and many alike.
Before I enrolled into a class studying the language of medicine my thoughts were with the religious people that Wagner spoke of, Opposed at the idea that people were going to ‘kill’ potential babies for science research. The thought that people don’t want their babies is a hard concept to grasp, however after getting more informed I am shocked to find that embryos in experiments such as Wilmuts don’t directly come from people, but instead come from freezers. These embryos are not necessarily unwanted, just overproduced. A process called “infertility treatment” helps couples that have difficulties conceiving on their own. Many eggs and sperm are taken from the couple, for one treatment involves fertilizing many...