Benefits of Cloning

• Human cloning technology could be used to reverse heart attacks.  Scientists believe that they may be able to treat heart attack victims by cloning their healthy heart cells and injecting them into the areas of the heart that have been damaged.  Heart disease is the number one killer in the United States and several other industrialized countries.
• There has been a breakthrough with human stem cells.  Embryonic stem cells can be grown to produce organs or tissues to repair or replace damaged ones.  Skin for burn victims, brain cells for the brain damaged, spinal cord cells for quadriplegics and paraplegics, hearts, lungs, livers, and kidneys could be produced.  By combining this technology with human cloning technology it may be possible to produce needed tissue for suffering people that will be free of rejection by their immune systems.  Conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, diabetes, heart failure, degenerative joint disease, and other problems may be made curable if human cloning and its technology are not banned.
• Infertility.  With cloning, infertile couples could have children.  Despite getting a fair amount of publicity in the news current treatments for infertility, in terms of percentages, are not very successful.  One estimate is that current infertility treatments are less than 10 percent successful.  Couples go through physically and emotionally painful procedures for a small chance of having children.  Many couples run out of time and money without successfully having children.  Human cloning could make it possible for many more infertile couples to have children than ever before possible.
• Plastic, reconstructive, and cosmetic surgery.  Because of human cloning and its technology the days of silicone breast implants and other cosmetic procedures that may cause immune disease should soon be over. With the new technology, instead of using materials foreign to the body for such procedures, doctors will be able to manufacture bone, fat, connective tissue, or cartilage that matches the patients tissues exactly.  Anyone will able to have their appearance altered to their satisfaction without the leaking of silicone gel into their bodies or the other problems that occur with present day plastic surgery. Victims of terrible accidents that deform the face should now be able to have their features repaired with new, safer, technology. Limbs for amputees may be able to be regenerated.
• Breast implants.  Most people are aware of the breast implant fiasco in which hundreds of thousands of women received silicone breast implants for cosmetic reasons.  Many came to believe that the implants were making them ill with diseases of their immune systems.  With human cloning and its technology breast augmentation and other forms of cosmetic surgery could be done with implants that would not be any different from the person's normal tissues.
• Defective genes.  The average person carries 8 defective genes inside them.  These defective genes allow people to become sick when they would otherwise remain healthy.  With human cloning and its technology it may be possible to ensure that we no longer suffer because of our defective genes.
• Down's syndrome. Those women at high risk for Down's syndrome can avoid that risk by cloning.
• Tay-Sachs disease. This is an autosomal recessive genetic disorder could be prevented by using cloning to ensure that a child does not express the gene for the disorder
• Liver failure. We may be able to clone livers for liver transplants
• Kidney failure. We may be able to clone kidneys for kidney transplants
• Leukemia.  We should be able to clone the bone marrow for children and adults suffering from leukemia.  This is expected to be one of the first benefits to come from cloning technology.
• Cancer.  We may learn how to switch cells on and off through cloning and thus be able to cure cancer.  Scientists still do not know exactly how cells differentiate into specific kinds of tissue, nor to they understand why cancerous cells lose their differentiation.  Cloning, at long last, may be the key to understanding differentiation and cancer.
• Cystic fibrosis.  We may be able to produce effective genetic therapy against cystic fibrosis.  Ian Wilmut and colleagues are already working on this problem.
• Spinal cord injury. We may learn to grow nerves or the spinal cord back again when they are injured.  Quadriplegics might be able to get out of their wheelchairs and walk again.  Christopher Reeves, the man who played Superman, might be able to walk again.
• Testing for genetic disease.  Cloning technology can be used to test for and perhaps cure genetic diseases.

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(Useful for UPSC General Studies, APPSC Group 1 Group 2 , Mains Material, Paper 1, Paper 4 Section 1 Section 2 Section 3, ROLE AND IMPACT OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF INDIA, GENERAL AWARENESS WITH THE MODERN TRENDS IN LIFE SCIENCES, DEVELOPMENT & ENVIRONMENT PROBLEMS)