Progress idea: Cloning.

Progress idea: Cloning.

        All the notions we have studied this year deal with man and interaction with others men. They deal with our society in the past, today and in future. Indeed the notions of progress are composed of three parts:  the social progress, the technological progress and the scientific progress. Progress is an idea that produces advancement in different contexts. It can improve human conditions of life; what would thus allow the improvement of the general humanity in various sectors.

Scientific progress is the idea that the set of the scientists learns more over time, and from the XVII th century through XXI st, the science history was often presented as an accumulation of knowledge.

The scientific progress has allowed us to improve medicine for 250 years for example the pacemaker, the heart transplantation or the MAP (Medical Assisted Procreation)… Scientific progress is making life more comfortable and this notion is controlled by thought and laws on ethics. The documents studied in class are used to define us an opinion on the cloning.

In what does the experiment on DNA by scientific consist and which consequences will ensue from it on the humanity?

        Firstly, we are going to address how the procedure is used to revive extinct species and the difficulties to clone them. Then we shall explain the consequences that the cloning on experiences already established can have or which are in project: Dolly, Woolly mammoth, Jurassic Park for example. Thirdly, we are going to discuss our thought on ethics-related cloning.

        Over the past decades, scientists have been interested in genetic cloning. In 1993, Jurassic Park movie shows it to us. The scientific goal is to find DNA and bring back to life extinct species alive. Nowadays, the professor Church is going to try to bring back to life a mammoth with the help of DNA which he found with his team in Arctic; this type of research cost a lot of money and a great deal of physical effort. His experiment consists in cutting of strands from an iced mammoth, to include it into petri dish. The cells from “the elephant mom” are mixed with the DNA from the mammoth in the goal to create a hybrid. The development of a hybrid embryo will be in an artificial womb to have most chance that it develops. The hybrid will be welcomed in our world, 42 000years after its extinction, in a park which was created by Russian scientists. In 1988, they opened the park which is an Ice ecosystem composed of animals as the musky buffaloes, reindeers, buffaloes. Its function will be to allow the future mammoth to live on Earth. The problem is to find a conserved DNA to replenish that of extinct species. The scientists fear that their discovery in Arctic is not capable of allowing the cloning of a mammoth; it is why they will try to complete it with elephant DNA.

We saw different kinds of cloning and all know a lot of different difficulties. On the one hand, in Jurassic Park, scientists have to take the blood from an exoskeleton of mosquito and this one could be contaminated by trees, human’s activity and others factors; it destroy themselves through the time due to bacteria, so the DNA code is lost and scientists have to complete it with frog’s DNA in the movie; but it could not be realizable because the mosquito lived 15 million years after dinosaurs. On the other hand, we learned that in 1996, a cloned sheep named Dolly was borne. The procedure to create Dolly is carried out in 5 steps, of which the fusion of the different cells and the transplantation are the most complex steps to establish Dolly. The complexity of this experiment is seen in the number of merged cells (200) and only one will be developed into a full grown adult.

        We also showed that cloning had become an experience that "became more currently" in spite of the difficulties which result from it. Ethics is going to allow to ask the good questions and thus to limit the overflowing consequences.

        As a result, the cloning could bring positive and negative consequences. In the context of bringing back to life a mammoth would be beneficial for our planet, thanks to it the Global Warming could decrease. And it will also allow de-extinction of certain endangered species if the results prove positive. If we can develop the cloning on human, the possibility to help in medical urgency will be real, replacement of any organ, the patients will not need waiting period and cloning will be able to help people who have difficulties to have children for example.

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