Cloning, the process of creating a copy of a plant or animal that is genetically identical to the original through asexual means, has sparked some interesting moral and ethical debate. For years, cloning has been used to produce a greater number of a specific type of plant, such as the Macintosh apple trees, which have all been derived from single mutated plant . Now, however, upon the discovery of a method to clone animals, even humans, people are beginning to become aware of the benefits and consequences of cloning, as well as the ethics involved. Cloning has had a fairly long history. In 1952, the first successful cloning experiment took place. Scientists Robert Briggs and Thomas King successfully removed the nucleus from a frog egg and replaced it with the nucleus of an undifferentiated cell from another frog. The egg, then placed in a nutrient solution, eventually developed into a healthy tadpole. In 1962, ten years later, a similar experiment took a differentiated intestinal cell and allowed the tadpole created to develop into a healthy, fertile toad. Later, in 1981, a scientist from Cambridge University then combined two embryos, one of a sheep and the other of a goat, making the first "mosaic" animal ever artificially created-the "geep," with the body of a goat covered with patches of sheep's wool. Then 1984, the first cloned mammals were produced from embryonic nuclei transplanted into unfertilized sheep eggs. Soon after, cloned calves and rabbits, both from embryonic nuclei, and just recently, the first mammal cloned from a fully differentiated adult sheep cell was created. The process of cloning an animal, especially a mammal, is not an easy one. In fact, there are multiple ways to go about accomplishing the task, depending on the source of the DNA used for cloning. If a differentiated cell, one that has certain genes expressed or unexpressed, is used, certain genes must first be forced to "turn on" in order for the cell to...
