11/1 Reflection

Human cloning was a very interesting topic for research. I decided to make my target audience for this piece future scientists of America. I feel like if I can get people to continue doing research and show the possibilities from cloning then the people of America and the rest of the world will follow suit. As of now cloning and specifically human cloning is mostly frowned upon by most of society. It seems that only those who are interested in the sciences are the ones who are really for human cloning. A person who doesn’t understand science so well doesn’t see what cloning really means and why it will and should become a more welcomed thing. The articles I based my research off of are from very creditable companies. Discover, NIH, and PBS are three companies which have built a good reputation and are known for writing quality articles. Based on my readings, I do think there is still plenty of research to be done and that regularly cloning humans will not be a thing for a very long time. They need to make the cloning more successful than it currently is or it will never be allowed just because it’s so close to this ethical boundary of who’s right it is to create people or in a sense play god. When talking to a group of future scientists of America and trying to sell my pitch, I didn’t receive the responses I expected. About half of the group said they would have no part of human cloning, but when asked if they knew anything about it they would respond with the typical answer of you just make a copy of someone. While this is for the most part true it’s not the real goal of cloning. This 50% of people didn’t understand why cloning is something that could greatly benefit the human race. The other 50% of people were a of course we should and a depends. The person who responded that we should definitely clone people was the oldest of the group and studying in what I believe to be the most involved form of science, premed. The other a younger biology major who doesn’t quite get what cloning is or could mean for people but they still think it would be beneficial to clone people who deserve to be. After this discussion I had with my fellow future scientists, I came to the conclusions that not enough people know why cloning could be so beneficial to humanity. There just isn’t enough of a voice about cloning and its possibilities to push people to believe that it’s the necessary thing to do. No one was really saying that we need to do this and the reason is because it’s just not ready to be done. No matter how many times you tell someone how great something is they won’t truly believe you until they see it for themselves and this is why cloning will not become a more talked about thing until the science can back up the possibilities. This is why my audience is future scientist of America and not the general population. I believe that we need more research to be done and in order to have that we need more scientists willing to devote their time and potentially lives to making cloning more successful and appealing to the general populous. 

11/1 Research Paper

Cloning describes the process that can be used to produce genetically identical copies of a living body. The copied thing, has the same genetic makeup as the original and is referred to as a clone. When considering to clone something there is a lot of ethical reasons that prevent people from justifying it’s alright to clone it. Human cloning is the most talked about when considering if its ethical. Most people don’t understand what cloning is or means to scientists. The three types of cloning, gene, reproductive, and therapeutic each have there own benefits and draw backs. 

Scientist Lee Silver said during an interview with NOVA, “95 percent of them said they were against human cloning” referring to a survey he had given. He says people just don’t understand what it means to scientists when you clone something. They see cloning as a way to replicate a human being and it soul. People were scared that scientists had gained control over the human life. This is not how Silver sees human cloning though. To him the only thing that a clone is is an organism that has the same genetic information as another organism. He continues to say that people eat clones all the time. Bananas are all produced by cloning and so are seedless grapes. Silver explains that cloning can benefit humans by lowering the risk of birth defects the kids are born with. A UK national health panel found a way to swap chromosomes between eggs so the offspring don’t inherit disease causing mutations from their mother’s mitochondria. This process is considered a type of cloning and is just the first step to making humans less perceptible to many common birth defects. By adding in the genes of a third person who doesn’t have a history of the target birth defect and removing the parent’s gene that does, you can reduce the risk that the child is born with the targeted defect. Some of the dieses that can be prevented are type 2 diabetes, deafness, blindness, and neurological problems. This process of swapping chromosomes is currently being tested on people after being successful in attempts on other animals. But there’s another ethical quandary here, it involves the destruction of the donor egg after it’s been fertilized. Also some people see the egg donor as a third parent which is not completely true. The child may be receiving new mitochondria from a third person but the mitochondria don’t affect the genes of the child which are tested when determining who the parents are. Mitochondria are similar to a battery in some technological device and your genes are the information on the device. When you change the battery, you are not effecting the information stored on the device. This is also true for when swapping the mitochondria in humans. This procedure of swapping mitochondria can make it possible from women with high amounts mitochondrial dieses to have a healthy baby.

Reproductive cloning is what everyone thinks about when they hear the term cloning. While reproductive cloning is a one of the three types of cloning it’s not the only form. The other two types of cloning are called gene and therapeutic cloning. Reproductive cloning produces an exact copy of the whole animal. This type of cloning is used when you want to use only one set of genes instead of splitting two sets which is how babies are formed naturally. Another form of cloning is gene cloning which produces copies of segments of genes in DNA. This type of cloning can’t be used to clone humans and it has not been used to clone any animals as of 2016. It allows scientists to take parts of someone’s DNA and replace it with another person’s DNA to see how that segment effects the specimen’s behavior. The third type of cloning is therapeutic cloning which produces embryonic stem cells for experiments aimed at creating tissues to replace injured or diseased tissues. The possibility to create parts of the human body such as a heart or liver could help people who need transplants greatly. Cloning could be used to create a new superior human race, one capable of higher feats are less prone to dieses and injuries.

 “In 1979, researchers produced the first genetically identical mice by splitting mouse embryos in the test tube and then implanting the resulting embryos into the wombs of adult female mice.”  In 1996, researchers succeeded in cloning the first mammal from a mature adult animal. It took 276 attempts but Scottish researchers finally produced Dolly, the lamb from a cell of a 6-year-old sheep. Since then cattle, cat, deer, dog, horse, mule, ox, rabbit and rat have all been successfully cloned. There is also some belief that a human clone named Eve was created back in 1998 but the company Clonaid didn’t provide any information that could prove if she was. It was believed Clonaid also cloned 12 other people after Eve but there was still no information proving this theory. Besides the 13 theoretical human clones, scientists in South Korea claimed to have successfully cloned a human embryo, but the experiment was shut down early due to ethical reasons. Another reason human cloning isn’t happening is because of the difficulty in successfully cloning a human. The process is much more complicated because our genetic structure is slightly different from most mammals. A protein known as the spindle protein is located close to our chromosomes in the eggs and when removing the nucleus to replace it with another the proteins are removed which causes the cell to not be able to divide.

As you can see, there are still many problems with human cloning ethically and technically. While most people continue to believe that cloning is wrong and immoral, scientists continue trying to find better ways to successfully clone humans and other mammals that may have become extinct. Human cloning has a place in our future and I don’t see it going anywhere anytime soon. It holds the solutions to many of our current problems such as cancers and organ failures. It could potentially be used to replace lost limbs of soldiers and people who were born with defects. Cloning is becoming a part of the future reproduction of humans and animals whether people want it to be or not.

Citations

"Cloning Fact Sheet." National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). NIH, May 2016. Web. 29 Oct. 2016.

By Veronique Greenwood. "Genetically Engineering Babies With Less Disease-and 3 Parents-Seems Safe - 80beats." 80beats. N.p., 21 Apr. 2011. Web. 29 Oct. 2016.

"Human CLoning." PBS. PBS, 2001. Web. 29 Oct. 2016.

10/20 Rough Draft 30%

Cloning describes the process that can be used to produce genetically identical copies of a living body. The copied thing, has the same genetic makeup as the original and is referred to as a clone. When considering to clone something there is a lot of ethical reasons that prevent people from justifying it’s alright to clone it. Human cloning is the most talked about when considering if its ethical. Clones can occur naturally in some specimens such as plants and single celled organisms. There has never been a human clone that occurred naturally, twins which seem to be close to being clone are actually just as far from a clone as we are. A clone is someone who is identical to their parent or person they were created from. There are three types of cloning, the frist called gene cloning which produces copies of genes of segments of DNA. Reproductive cloning produces an exact copy of the whole animal and Therapeutic cloning produces embryonic stem cells which are used to create tissues. When people think of cloning they only consider reproductive cloning, they don’t think about the other two types of cloning which can benefit the human race very significantly. The possibility to create parts of the human body such as a heart or liver could help people who need transplants greatly. Gene cloning could be used to create a new superior human race, one capable of high feats are less prone to dieses and injuries. These are just some of the possibilities from cloning.

A UK national health panel found way to swap chromosomes between eggs so offspring don’t inherit disease causing mutations from their mothers mitochondria. This is just the first step to making humans less perceptible to many common birth defects. By adding in a the genes of a third person who doesn’t have a history of the target birth defect and removing the parents gene that does, you can reduce the risk that the child is born with the targeted defect. Some of the dieses that can be prevented are type 2 diabetes, deafness, blindness, and neurological problems. This process of swapping chromosomes is currently being tested on people after being successful in attempts on other animals. But there’s an ethical quandary here, it involves the destruction of the donor egg after it’s been fertilized. Also some people see the egg donor as a third parent which is not completely true. The child may be receiving new mitochondria from a third person but the mitochondria don’t affect the genes of the child which are tested when determining who the parents are. Mitochondria are similar to a battery in some technological device and your genes are the information on the device. When you change the battery, you are not effecting the information store on the device. This is also true for when swapping the mitochondria in humans. This procedure of swapping mitochondria can make it possible from women with high amounts mitochondrial dieses to have a healthy baby.

10/18 History with the Library

Between page and screen by Amaranth Borsuk

The library is a building or room containing collections of books, periodicals, and sometimes films and recorded music for people to read, borrow, or refer to. I have only been there a few times since coming to college. Even in high school I only went to the library because the class required it. Since I came to Syracuse i have been in the library only three times. All three times were this year, the first being to print out my resume for the engineering career fair. The second time I had to staple one of my homeworks together for one of my classes. The last time i cam to the library I was expected to actually look at books and first one to check out. I didn't even know where to begin, I started by climbing each flight of stairs just to realize there wasn't any signs saying take this book. So I went back to the first floor where i had saw the new books section upon entering. I looked at a few books before seeing this little all red book. It was filled with nothing but pictures and i thought it would be perfect. A assignment in which I taking pictures of a book with only pictures, it just made sense. So after i found my book i had to find a place to check it out. I looked for the nearest desk and it just happened to be the right place. I gave her my book and card, made a joke about how this book was perfect for this assignment, and then put the book in my bag and went home. This was by far the most involved trip i have ever had to the library since i left high school. Even in high school i didn't do much looking around in the library. I asked the librarian where i could find a specific topic and i took the first book related to my research. As you can tell, me and the library are not the best of friends, we rarely ever see each other and when we do, its short and to the point. 

10/13 Pitch

Human cloning, the future of reproduction. Cloning instead of natural reproduction provides us with the ability to prevent any flaws that can occur in our genes. Human cloning doesn’t mean you cloning an entire person either, you can clone parts of people such as a new liver or heart for the person in need. It will allow anyone to have children and to be able to change characteristics and particular traits of them. It also can help prevent some disorders that kids are born with and also premature deaths. Human cloning is more than what people think it is and its possibilities are endless.

My intended audience is future scientists and I sent this pitch out via in person.

10/11 Research Questions

Question 1:

Is human cloning a good or bad idea?

Response 1:

Bad.

Response 2:

Depends who you want to clone.

Response 3:

Human cloning is a bad idea because it is unethical.

Question 2:

What makes people human?

Response 1:

Consciousness, uniqueness, competence, intelligence

Response 2:

If they evolved from another human

Response 3:

A being capable of complex thought and emotions

Question 3:

How does cloning change the value of human life?

Response 1:

If a person is cloned, that takes away a key factor of what makes people human: uniqueness. No two people are exactly the same so if someone is cloned, the individuality in the world is taken away.

Response 2:

It makes one’s original life less significant

Response 3:

The clone is considered a specimen/experiment more than it is considered human. If humans can just be casually “made” then the value of life is decreased.

As you can see, all three interviewees were mostly against human cloning. When asking people my questions I decided to write the question out and let then answer at their own leisure. When answering the first question person two had written depends who you want to clone followed by saying out loud I definitely wouldn’t clone that idiot while pointing to Trump. All of my interviewees were female and majoring in some type of science. Based on the few responses I received it’s safe to say not all people are ok with human cloning. In the end I wasn’t surprise with the answers I got, if everyone was for human cloning then we would be doing more often and it would be on the news more. When looking at the types of questions I asked, question one gave the responder a choice to say good or bad without further explanation. This question was not a good research question because of this. Question two also was quite difficult for my three interviewees. When asked the question of what makes a human human, two of the three started off by saying I can’t really explain it. This question might not be the best research question when looking for a specific answer because there isn’t one. Question three came very easily to the three of them, with them all saying the clone is less unique and the person who was cloned is also less unique. Out of the three question I believe question two was the best though. It’s a question which doesn’t have one correct answer which leaves room for your own input.