I
decided to post something related to cloning, as I find it interesting part of
medicine even though it comes with a lot of question, morals and ethics.
Therapeutic
cloning is the transfer of nuclear material sequestered from a somatic cell
into an enucleated oocyte in the pursuit of getting embryonic cell lines with
the identical genome as the nuclear donor. Therapeutic cloning is a progression
in medicine and biotechnology which offers an understanding of scientific principles
and ethical consequences to be clinically appropriate in medicine. The basis of
therapeutic cloning is in the hope of curing genetic diseases when used in union
with gene therapy. The success of therapeutic cloning will give hope to people
with Parkinson disease, Duchenne muscular dystrophy and diabetes mellitus.
Therapeutic cloning is faced with ethical issues as to the source, annihilation
and moral status but I think it is confused with reproductive cloning.
Therapeutic cloning is for developing embryonic cell lines with the identical
genome as the donor while reproductive cloning is the conception of a person.
Recently, two teams were able to create human embryonic stem cells
from adult patients by means of cloning, with this success, researchers are
getting nearer to supplying patient-specific cures in the clinic. A paper was
published in cell stem cell, a team of researchers developed a procedure for
the generation of human embryonic
stem cells (ESCs) via Somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) using dermal
fibroblasts from 35 and 75 year old males. The result shows that soon doctors
will be able to provide patient-specific treatments for use in regenerative
medicine.
Following their success, another group of scientist made a huge
success as well in developing therapeutic approaches by producing a patient
specific line of stem cells from a woman with type 1 diabetes. The success of producing
cells that produce and secrete insulin demonstrates that it can be used to
develop replacement stem cell therapies for type 1 diabetes. The success by
these researchers was reached by improving the procedures established by
Shoukhrat Mitalipov for somatic cell nuclear transfer. The researchers used
oocytes from health donors, detached the eggs nuclei and nucleus was replaced
from the somatic cell of the matured patients. The result of this procedure was
an embryo, during the blastocyst phase, the researchers were able to develop unwavering
embryonic stem cell lines that are practicable for therapeutic use.
Before now, the development of stem cells for therapeutic use was
deemed challenging and impracticable, but these researchers has proved it is
possible which a miracle is. This is a promising discovery but the question
now, there will be a need for continuous source of donors for this to be
practicable, will creating an egg donor center be considered illogical,
unethical or both?
Work cited:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2323472/
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