as the use of cloning becomes increasingly popular. That is if we humans consider cloning acceptable technology, and that we would like to use for the twenty- first century. Cloning has progressed so quickly, few of us know if we should be even fooling with this once the pros outweigh the cons. A good place for us to find that information is to look at the past and current research results with cloning and why scientists research it.Amazingly, the first attempts at artificial cloning were as early as the beginning of this century. The most well known clone arrived on July 5 at 4:00 P.M. lamb number 6LL3 (Economist 1997), or Dolly, was born. She weighed in at 14 pounds and was healthy. Scientists accomplished this by using frozen mammary cells taken from a six-year-old pregnant ewe and fusing them with an enucleated egg. The trick to fusing the cells is giving a small electric current to the petri dish on which the egg cell is. This stimulates the egg much like a sperm would, and usually takes the genetic material from the cell and becomes a zygote. The fertilized zygote was then placed in another ewe acting as a surrogate mother. The experiment was a success and Dolly became the first successfully cloned mammal.Scientists also foresee the cloning of pigs to produce organs that humans will not reject (Wills, 1998). Cloning also provides better research capabilities for finding cures to many diseases. There are also possibilities that nuclear transfer could provide benefits to those who would like children. For instance, couples who are infertile, or have genetic disorders, could use cloning to produce a child. Equally important, women who are single could have a child using cloning instead of in-vitro fertilization.Cloning does offer some negative affects it could have to life. The biggest problem with asexual reproduction is that genetic diversity becomes limited. If a population of organisms has the same genetic inform...
