Cloning has pros and cons, with benefits including disease-resistant plants and higher quality food, but there are concerns about genetic diversity and cost. Cloning humans could provide vital organs for transplants but raises moral and ethical issues. The debate on cloning will continue as technology develops.
The pros and cons of cloning are a huge topic, one that scientists and ethicists haven’t fully figured out yet. One problem when discussing this topic is the different kinds of things being cloned. People may see more benefits in cloning plants or animals than in cloning whole people, for example.
Some pros of cloning plants are mentioned quite often. For example, cloning could help reproduce more disease-resistant plants. Reproduction of higher plants, especially those with nutritional superiority, could help address the problems of world hunger. Cloned plants are also more predictable, which could help save millions of dollars in growing costs, and endangered plants could be saved through the right cloning programs.
Similar benefits apply to cloning pets, such as those that provide food sources. Cloning could help produce higher quality food, make animals more resistant to disease and tackle the problems of world hunger. Rare animals could be saved from extinction, particularly those animals that don’t reproduce well under changing environmental circumstances.
Many people see fewer deeply conflicting pros and cons to cloning plants and animals, but there are some cons to consider. First, efforts to genetically engineer or completely clone plant and animal species could lead to a lack of necessary DNA diversity. Diversity helps improve survival in the future, especially when unpredictable things happen. Scientists cannot predict the potential development of viruses or other agents of destruction to which a cloned species may have to react in the future.
For example, maybe scientists decide to clone all the rice in the world. They gradually produce only one kind, much more nutritious than other kinds. More rice is no longer produced and its DNA variants disappear. In the future, a disease strikes the rice crop and destroys it completely, and the world suddenly lacks rice.
This is perhaps the biggest “con” of cloning and the most cited. Cloning may underestimate the possibility of the need for genetic variation in the future under unpredictable circumstances. Similar problems could arise for cloned pets, particularly if they completely replaced animals that created genetic variations through normal breeding methods.
Another of the disadvantages of cloning animals is the potential cost. It is currently much more expensive to clone than to reproduce animals by other means. The failure rate remains high, although it is likely to be reduced, as well as cost, if cloning is undertaken on a larger scale. Cost affects another of the pros and cons of cloning food supply animals. Some people experience a great reluctance to eat cloned meat, which could lower the value of cloned animals.
The pros and cons of cloning humans are more complex. There are certainly potential benefits of cloning. Among these is the ability to clone parts of humans, such as vital organs for use in transplants, which would likely negate organ rejection problems. Some people believe that cloning humans who cannot have children of their own or who lose their children at a very young age is among the “pros” of human cloning development.
Cons include cloning methods, which when involving fertilized embryos, are considered by some to be morally repugnant. Others believe that the idea of cloning humans is “playing God.” Another fear exists if people decide to genetically engineer super children. What would happen to the average person not produced by cloning methods? This is fodder for legitimate scientific, legal and ethical debate and for many science fiction films.
Cost is also an issue, and it would be hard to know if a health insurance company would pay for one person to have an organ cloned, or if these prices would be so prohibitive as to make the process unaffordable or available to only a few. Again, the issue of genetic diversity is an important one. Would cloning remove a gene or piece of DNA today that doesn’t seem important, but might be in a different world in the future?
Discussions about the pros and cons of cloning are expected to continue with many people conflicting about the best way forward. Some cloning already exists, and more are likely as science continues to develop this technology. Once cloning technology reaches its full potential, humans will still be left with the question of when and how to apply it.
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