9 Key Advantages and Disadvantages of Cloning Animals
The idea of cloning animals to obtain the best characteristics of the herd have been around since ancient time. However, animals cloning research and testing is something pretty new. The first mammal to be successfully cloned was a sheep named Dolly in 1996. Animals cloning means taking a single cell from an adult animal, and using it to create an exact genetic copy of that animal. There are countless uses for this type of cloning, but many opponents urge people to think about the risks and issues that surround the practice. Learning about the good and bad that has and may come from animal cloning is the best way to educate yourself and form your own opinion on this controversial topic.
Advantages of Cloning Animals
1. Spread On The Best Characteristics
Just like humans, some animals have better traits than others of their same species. This may include immunity to certain illnesses or an increase of milk production. Whatever the trait may be, it can be duplicated with animal cloning. Once the trait is cloned into multiple animals, it has a much better chance of becoming a dominant trait in the herd.
2. Bring Back a Deceased Pet
Animal cloning also has the capability of bringing back precious family pets that have died. In fact, this has been done successfully multiple times. This means that man’s best friend can remain his best friend for life.
3. Medical Benefits
A wide variety of medical testing can be done on animals, which makes cloning them beneficial. It gives scientists the ability to have multiple test subjects that are completely identical. This results in much better results and there fore better medical research.
4. Preserve Endangered Species
There are over 15 thousand different species of animals currently on the endangered species list. With the use of animal cloning, it would be plausible to save these species from becoming extinct. This idea also applies to bringing back species that have long been gone from the planet. Animals such as the Wooly Mammoth could possibly roam the earth once again through the use of cloning technologies.
5. More Nutritious Animals Products
Animals can be genetically engineered to contain certain types of proteins or minerals. Once this is done, they can be cloned to mass produce this new animal product. A great example of this is Polly the lamb. She was cloned and produces milk that contains fibrinogen and factor IX, which is the substances that anemics lack in their blood.
Disadvantages of Cloning Animals
1. Economically Unfeasible
The success rate of human cloning is extremely low, about 3 percent. Pair this sad success rate with the enormous costs that are involved in the cloning of an animal and you have a game of roulette that not many people are going to want to be a part of. The prospect of large scale animal cloning is far off into the future.
2. Food Safety Is Unknown
The majority of the appealing benefits that would come from animal cloning have to do with food production. Whether it be the meat or other by product of the cloned animal, the safety of it’s consumption is still widely unknown. The research that would be necessary to test the safety of meat, milk, and eggs that come from cloned animals has a very long way to go before these cloned products hit the market.
3. Animals Have Shorter Life Spans
Animals that have been successfully cloned have significantly shorter life spans than those who have not. This is thought to be because the age of the animals that it is cloned from is imprinted into the DNA of the cloned animals, causing it to age faster and experience more health problems.
4. Largely Unresolved Ethical Problems
The idea of cloning animals holds quite a bit of moral and ethical repercussions. Religious and ethical critics of animal cloning believe that it is “playing God” and a Pandora’s box that should be left closed. The limits of this technology will surely be pushed once the methods are perfected.
