Rachel Levine
Summary
This article explains how human tissue cloning could treat heart disease and/or Parkinson's Disease. Scientists have been having trouble cloning human cells due to many difficulties until a few scientists added caffeine to cell cultures. This allowed them to do such things as producing one stem cell from only two eggs cells. Stem cells are cells that are not yet specialized, and scientists can specialize them into different cells such as nerve cells (or neurons) or even cardiac muscle cells. People with heart disease, Parkinson's Disease, diabetes, or other diseases could benefit from tissue transplants of these cloned cells. This would reduce the rate of deaths around the world. This article also discusses the effects of human cloning. There are many dangers of human cloning, but also many benefits such as cloning one of the parents in a couple who both have a recessive allele of a certain disease. This would ensure that the child does not have this disease.
Relevance to Class
In class, we learned about the different body systems, like the circulatory system and the nervous system. This article explains about the possible treatment of certain diseases, such as heart attacks and Parkinson's Disease. As we learned in class, there are many different heart diseases, some resulting in a heart attack. With this new technology, heart diseases can be treated more efficiently. Again, we learned from the presentations in class that Parkinson's Disease is a disease of the nervous system. Parkinson's Disease has no cure, but with human tissue cloning, it can be treated (but not cured).
Author of Article: Robin McKie
Date of Publication: May 18, 2013
What would be some of the dangers of human cloning?
ReplyDeleteDoes the patient getting this treatment have to be very young or can it be done on adults?
ReplyDeleteHas human cloning been done before and if so was it successful and did the person being cloned live?
ReplyDelete