Therapeutic cloning

Reproductive vs. 'therapeutic' cloning

Is there a difference?

Cloning is done through a process called somatic cell nuclear transplantation (SCNT). This is the scientific term for cloning. All clones made through SCNT are made the same way; the only difference is what is done with the cloned embryos after they are created. Scientists may let the clone live—reproductive cloning; or kill the clone for her stem cells—therapeutic cloning.

Stem cell researchers want tax dollars to kill cloned embryos for stem cell research, but they say they aren’t really cloning because the cloned embryo won’t be allowed to grow and develop! Fortunately, in 2009 the Minnesota Legislature passed language, effective for two years, prohibiting taxpayer funding of human cloning at the University of Minnesota.

See for yourself that cloning is cloning, whether you kill the clone or let the clone live.

Reproductive cloning occurs when a copy of another human being is created through SCNT, allowed to grow up to 14 days in a petri dish, and then transplanted into a womb to grow until birth.

Reproductive cloning has been used to create Dolly the Sheep and many cloned cows, dogs, cats and horses.
277 cloned embryos were created and destroyed before Dolly was successfully cloned. Even then she was a very sickly sheep and had to be put down.
There have been NO successful attempts to reproductively clone a human being ... yet.
The scientific community claims it is not interested in creating cloned human beings, but this is a half truth. In reality some scientists support cloning, so long as the clone is killed before it could be born! This is called therapeutic cloning.

Therapeutic cloning occurs when cloned embryos created through SCNT are allowed to grow for a few days and then killed for their stem cells.

It could help advance embryonic stem cell research.
Many scientists feel that therapeutic cloning isn’t really cloning because the embryo is not allowed to live beyond 4-5 days, but the cloning process is exactly the same.
Human life begins at conception. Even if the young life is only five days old, it is still a human being worthy of respect.
Embryos created in this manner are not treated with dignity, not only because they are a cloned copy of another person, but also because they are not allowed to live beyond a few days.
Therapeutic cloning makes human life a commodity to be created, manipulated and destroyed merely for the sake of experimentation.

Reference:- www.mccl.org/reproductive-vs-therapeutic-cloning.html

What is therapeutic cloning?

Therapeutic cloning involves creating a cloned embryo for the sole purpose of producing embryonic stem cells with the same DNA as the donor cell. These stem cells can be used in experiments aimed at understanding disease and developing new treatments for disease. To date, there is no evidence that human embryos have been produced for therapeutic cloning.

The richest source of embryonic stem cells is tissue formed during the first five days after the egg has started to divide. At this stage of development, called the blastocyst, the embryo consists of a cluster of about 100 cells that can become any cell type. Stem cells are harvested from cloned embryos at this stage of development, resulting in destruction of the embryo while it is still in the test tube.

In November 2007, using a new cloning method that removes the egg's nucleus without dyes or ultraviolet light, researchers produced the first primate embryonic stem cells. The work involved transferring the nucleus of a skin cell from a male rhesus monkey into the nucleus-free egg of a female rhesus monkey. These embryonic stem cells did not develop into a whole monkey, and researchers said their work was aimed at therapeutic applications. However, the research shows that, with some adjustments, the techniques used to make whole copies of other animals may also work in primates.

What are the potential applications of therapeutic cloning?

Researchers hope to use embryonic stem cells, which have the unique ability to generate virtually all types of cells in an organism, to grow tissues in the laboratory that can be used to grow healthy tissue to replace injured or diseased tissues. In addition, it may be possible to learn more about the molecular causes of disease by studying embryonic stem cell lines from cloned embryos derived from the cells of animals or humans with different diseases.

What are the potential drawbacks of therapeutic cloning?

Many researchers think it is worthwhile to explore the use of embryonic stem cells as a path for treating human diseases. However, some experts are concerned about the striking similarities between stem cells and cancer cells. Both cell types have the ability to proliferate indefinitely and some studies show that after 60 cycles of cell division, stem cells can accumulate mutations that could lead to cancer. Therefore, the relationship between stem cells and cancer cells needs to be more clearly understood if stem cells are to be used to treat human disease.

Reference :- https://www.genome.gov/25020028#al-12

Some of the products that have been used in human therapy are:-

insulin for diabetics
factor VIII for males suffering from hemophilia A
factor IX for hemophilia B
human growth hormone (HGH)
erythropoietin (EPO) for treating anemia
several types of interferons
several interleukins
granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) for stimulating the bone marrow after a bone marrow transplant
granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) for stimulating neutrophil production (e.g., after chemotherapy) and for mobilizing hematopoietic stem cells from the bone marrow into the blood.
tissue plasminogen activator (TPA) for dissolving blood clots
adenosine deaminase (ADA) for treating some forms of severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID)
parathyroid hormone
many monoclonal antibodies
hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) to vaccinate against the hepatitis B virus
C1 inhibitor (C1INH) used to treat hereditary angioedem

Reference:- users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/R/RecombinantDNA.html