Stem Cells Cloning
The ability to clone a particular cell, tissue, organ or even an entire body has a tremendous potential in the medical world in terms of what it can mean in terms of the development of a treatment or cure for any number of diseases and other ailments that individuals face around the world. Nevertheless while this may have a number of positive benefits attributed to it there are also a large number of ethical concerns related to cloning using stem cells that are preventing it from becoming a mainstream treatment option.
The primary reason for the ethical concerns related to stem cell cloning lies in the process of how the cloning occurs. As cells are driven by deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) encoded within the central nucleus of the cell this means that, for a cell to divide and develop into an intended biological structure, an original cell must have its DNA removed and replaced with the target DNA – in computer terms, removing the entire hard disk and replacing it with a new one so you can start fresh. This forces the cell to replicate and follow the target DNA structure rather than its initially intended replication chain.
In order to ensure that the cell has the greatest replication ability as well the cell must be harvested and modified in as early of the cell’s replication stage as possible. For this reason newly developing embryonic cells are the most viable as they contain the potential to be “omnipotent” or develop into any cellular structure, while more differentiated cells (such as those taken from umbilical cord fluids) are already partially differentiated and therefore cannot be used to fully clone anything from an organ to an entire creature.
Because of the underlying benefit – and indeed necessity in most cases – of utilizing embryonic stem cells for treatment purposes little work has been done into this particular venue as any experiments or treatments using such cells would effectively be terminating any developing life. Nevertheless research is still being done on more differentiated “adult stem cells” that can be harvested from fully grown individuals with little to no harm to the person in order to generate treatments and recent advancements in this regard have proven highly promising in many regenerative treatments that can be used for a number of purposes. Still, full tissue or organ cloning using adult stem cells is proving difficult due to the differentiation needs and may prove a medical impossibility after all.
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