The Disadvantages of Therapeutic Cloning

Therapeutic cloning is used to replace and repair damaged or defective tissue from the parent where the cloned cells came from. This is done by producing cloned embryos to create stem cells to grow the replacement tissue. This cloning technique can be used to grow replacement hearts, livers, and other major organs. Therapeutic cloning can also keep a patient off an organ waiting list and not having to worry about the body rejecting a donated organ. These stems cells can also provide healthy nerve cells and replacement skin for burn patients.

So if therapeutic cloning can provide people with new organs and replacement skin, why is not being done all over the world? This is because there are several disadvantages of therapeutic cloning.

Using therapeutic cloning to cure or treat diseases with adult stem cells is not working like the traditional cloning process. Before, this process was looking very beneficial. But, therapeutic cloning is a new field and the application of these adult stem cells is very limited. Embryos have been proven to have a greater flexibility than the adult stem cells. So more research will have to be done before adult stem cells can be used to cure or treat any diseases.

Since therapeutic cloning is new there are many deficiencies that have to be overcome. In many cases, stem cells sometimes mutated and then still rejected by the recipient's body. Other studies came out with a result where tumors started to develop. Although, the case were tumors developed was only done on animals, scientists still find it very likely for the same response with humans.

Another disadvantage of therapeutic cloning is where all the eggs come from. It takes many eggs to produce a usable stem cell. And when we talk about many eggs, this means in most cases more than a hundred. If a cure for a specific disease is needed and therapeutic cloning is used, it could take over 1.5 billion eggs (or more depending on the disease) to cure every person with the disease.

To get eggs for therapeutic cloning, there has to be donors. For women, donating eggs is very painful and costly. And with the limited amount of eggs a woman can donate at a time, over 500,000 women would have to be willing to do so. This number is not very realistic. This is a major disadvantage of therapeutic cloning.

This is the disadvantage where a lot of debate comes in. Pro-life supporters believe that a person exists at conception while some believe that the somatic cell nuclear transfer during therapeutic cloning also creates life. During the process of extracting stem cells, the embryo is killed. Pro-life supporters believe this is murder and to kill one person to cure another can not be justified.

National Human Genome Research Institute: Therapeuitc Cloning - www.genome.gov/25020028#al-14