Genetic Engineering :: Genetic Engineering Essays

At the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland, Dr. Keith Campbell, director of embryology at PPL therapeutics in Roslin, and his colleague Dr. Ian Wilmut worked together on a chore to bell ringer a sheep, Dolly, from adult cells. On February 22, 1997, they finally succeeded. Dolly was the merely lamb born from 277 fusions of oocytes with udder cells. Wilmut says there were so many failures because it is heavy to ensure that the empty oocytes and the donor cell atomic number 18 at the same(p) stage of the cell division cycle.To clone Dolly, basically scientists took an unfertilized musket ball cell, removed the nucleus, replaced it with cells taken from the organism to be cloned, put it into an empty orchis cell which begins to develop as an embryo, and implanted this embryo into a mother, from which the clone was born.The fact that only 1 out of 277 attempts succeeded is a little scary when applied to human beings. If an attempt to clone a human light-emitting diode to that high of a death toll, then there would non be many supporters. According to Rifkin, in an extensive survey of all 106 clinical trials of experimental gene therapies conducted over the past five years involving much than 597 patients, a panel of experts convened by the NIG reported that "Clinical efficacy has not been definitively demonstrated at this time in any gene therapy protocol, in spite of anecdotal claims of successful therapy." (545). These results are also happening with people who are trying to get gene therapy. With these facts on the table, it would not be model to try to clone humans if cloning an animal took several century attempts and human gene therapy has had hundreds of failures as well.Humans are going way beyond their limits in the field of biotechnology in the world today. Until recently, these ideas were unheard of. instantaneously with new technology, scientists are capable of changing an organisms genetic make-up. We are rattling eager to lear n new things, however, this eagerness gets in the way of joint sense all too often. As stated in Starr and Taggarts article, "we do not have the wisdom to bring about beneficial changes without do great harm to ourselves or to the environment." (514). However, the nave public may indirect request to jump right into things, and scientists will not disagree.Scientists are messing with things that they should not be messing with.