Should Cloning Take Place?

Have you ever wished you could have a clone of yourself to do homework, while you hit the skate park with your friends?
Well…Over the past few years, the ethics of human and animal cloning has become a great issue. The advocates for both sides of this argument have many reasons to clone and not to clone. Cloning is the creation of an organism that is an exact genetic copy of another. This means that every single bit of DNA is the same between the two! You may not believe it, but there are human clones among us right now.

Those who support cloning see quite definite benefits in carrying out research.
Some of the more common arguments are:
Nature is already a cloning organism. For example, the strawberry plant, potatoes, grass and bacteria. Also it could able people to raise an identical child after an unfortunate death. Plus cloning would be useful to have the ability to clone genetic modified animals. These animals could include cows that produce milk with no lactose, which would help people who are allergic to lactose.

On the other hand cloning is a very sensitive subject. The cloning debate attracts quite passionate objections from people. Lots of people say… Just because we can clone, doesn’t mean we should! A very large percentage of cloning efforts end up in failure. For instance, it took 277 attempts to clone Dolly the sheep. Often clones don’t live as long as sexually reproduced animals, possibly because the genes taken from adults are more likely to have undergone mutations. Cloning can be very upsetting. In January 2001 a little baby gaur was cloned. Unfortunately the animal only survived for 48 hours, this makes me feel that cloning should not be developed any further. Most importantly cloning will stop genetic improvements to a species. This is because genetic improvements usually occur through sexual reproduction, which result in a mixing of the genes of the mother and father. If we try to clone endangered species, then we will put the females of the species at risk.

One must understand that cloning does not produce an exact copy of the person or animal being cloned. What cloning does, is that it copies the DNA/genes of the person/animal and creates a duplicate genetically. In conclusion I think cloning should stop, it shouldn’t really develop any further. Apart from the odd chance, cloning makes people end up in tears. Maybe having a clone of your self won’t be as good after all.