THE CLONE FACTORY

Animal Cloning: Is It a Scientific Miracle?

What is Animal Cloning?

Animal Cloning is the process by which an entire organism is reproduced from a single cell taken from the parent organism and in a genetically identical manner.

This means the cloned animal is an exact duplicate in every way of its parent; it has the same exact DNA.

Development of Animal Cloning in the Lab

Scientists have been attempting to clone

animals for a very long time. Many of the early attempts came to nothing. The first fairly successful results in animal cloning were seen when tadpoles were cloned from frog embryonic cells. This was done by the process of nuclear transfer. The tadpoles so created did not survive to grow into mature frogs, but it was a major breakthrough nevertheless.

After this, using the process of nuclear transfer on embryonic cells, scientists managed to produce clones of mammals.

The first successful instance of animal cloning was that of Dolly the Sheep, who not only lived but went on to reproduce herself and naturally. Dolly was created by Ian Wilmut and his team at the Roslyn Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1997.

Dolly the sheep….

After hundreds of tries, Scottish scientists successfully took a cell from an adult sheep, fused it to another sheep’s unfertilized egg and implanted the resulting embryo in a surrogate mother. But Dolly’s birth gave way to fears and speculation about what this discovery meant for humanity’s ability to manipulate biology.

Since then Scientists have been successful in producing a variety of other animals like rats, cats, horses, bullocks, pigs, deer, etc.

You can even clone human beings now and that has given rise to a whole new ethical debate. Is it okay to duplicate nature to this extent? Is it okay to produce human clones? What would that do to the fabric of our society?

Now animal cloning can be done both for reproductive and non-reproductive or therapeutic purposes.

In the second case, cloning is done to produce stem cells or other such cells that can be used for therapeutic purposes, for example, for healing or recreating damaged organs; the intention is not to duplicate the whole organism.

Points against Animal Cloning

In a large percentage of cases, the cloning process fails in the course of pregnancy or some sort of birth defects occur, for example, as in a recent case, a calf born with two faces. Sometimes the defects manifest themselves later and kill the clone.

Points for Animal Cloning

On the favorable side with successful animal cloning you know exactly how your clone is going to turn out. This becomes especially useful when the whole intention behind cloning is to save a certain endangered species from becoming totally extinct.

Do you know about…

mass production of chickens?

battery farms (animals are held in small sheds) ?

free-range chickens ( animals that roam freely for food rather than being confined indoors) ?

free range eggs?

vocabulary

era (n) : time period

The discovery of antibiotics marked an era in modern medicine.  

massive (adj) : large, bulky

People believed that three massive stone blocks beneath the Temple of Jupiter Baal were placed by giants.

rate (n) : ratio, proportion

It might surprise you to hear that lawyers are suiciding at an alarming rate across the United States.

prospect (n) : outlook for future

The training he got last summer offered a prospect of continuous employment.

scale up (v) : to increase the size, amount or importance of something

Thanks to new investments, manufacturing capacity has been scaled up.

team up (v) : to form a group with other people in order to do something together

He teamed up with the band to produce the album.

modify (v) : alter, change

She may be prepared to

modify her views.

envisage (v) : consider, imagine, visualize

He envisages the possibility of establishing direct diplomatic relations in the future.

vulnerable (adj) : open to attact

Small fish are vulnerable to predators.

The scheme will help charities working with vulnerable adults and young people

adopt (v) : choose or take someting as one’s own

This approach has been adopted by the majority of banks.

Useful Expressions

Roll off (the production line)

Mass production

Keep pace with something

Fall victim to disease

Be fit for somebody

FOCUS QUESTIONS

1. How do the goals of researchers and farmers differ?

2. What is the difference between a clone and a chimera?

3. What are Origen’s two major challenges?

READING COMPREHENSION

Looking for the main ideas:

2. Because they grow at the same rate, have the same amount of meat, and taste the same.

3. Because it increases the suffering of farm birds.

4. The advantages of mass-producing identical chickens are that the birds can be made to be disease-resistant, they can grow quickly and with less food, and farmers can adopt strains that don’t carry food-poisoning bacteria.

The disadvantages are that many embryos die, more birds go lame because their bone growth cannot keep pace with their muscle growth, and when one bird is vulnerable to a disease it affects all the clones.

Skimming and scanning for details

1. It means the prospect of cloning chickens.

2. A chimera is created in a two-step process. First, embryonic stem cells are removed from a freshly laid, fertilized egg. Then these donor cells are injected into the embryo of another freshly laid, fertilized recipient egg.

3. A chimera contains cells from both donor and recipient. A clone contains only donor cells.

4. Origen plans to scale up production of genetically engineered chickens by using machines that can inject 50,000 eggs each hour.

5. Origen’s first challenge is to create a chimera.

6. The discrepancy is that Origen’s Web site discusses the process of engineering birds that lay eggs containing medical drugs, yet Origen’s spokesperson says that the company is not considering genetic modification.