Pursuasive Essay

What if you woke up and walked downstairs and saw someone just like you sitting at the breakfast table? This situation is what the media tries to get the viewers to believe is the only kind of cloning, but there are more. For instance; recombinant cloning, this is the cloning of genes. But the negatives outweigh the positives in cloning and this is why it should be stopped. Cloning is expensive, and in this economic slump so much money shouldn't be spent on learning how to make another cow. Cloning only has an average success rate of 9% and more than 100 nuclear transfer procedures could have to be attempted to produce 1 viable clone(orni.gov). At about 2,000 dollars an attempt you can see that this procedure isn't worth the money or time of this nation. So I think that if these scientists want to continue with these experiments it should come out of their own pocket.

Another reason cloning is bad is because of animal cruelty. Cloned animals tend to have more compromised immune systems, and higher rates of infection, tumor growth, and other disorders. For example the glorified sheep Dolly, the first animal to be successfully cloned, was put down by lethal injection Feb 14, 2003. Prior to her death Dolly had been suffering from lung cancer and crippling arthritis(Somatic Cell Neuclear Protection). About a third of cloned animals born alive have died young and were abnormally large. Appearing healthy when they were born, most clones soon die mysteriously.

Last but not least cloning is morally wrong. Therapeutic cloning, also known as embryo cloning, is the production of human embryos for use in research. This process is used to collect stem cells that can be used to study human development and help find cures for diseases. The extraction process destroys the embryos.

Although cloning has its overwhelming negatives it has a few positives which include maintaining biodiversity. Even though the cloning of more complex animals is unsuccessful, thus far, scientists may get technology advanced enough to help endangered species and even some extinct species come back into everyday existence, such as the ice mammoth found recently in Siberia(National Geographic).

One other reason cloning isn't all bad is because of agriculture. Some animals can be genetically modified to express specific traits, such as Polly, a cloned lamb that has been genetically altered to produce milk that contains factor IX; the protein that is deficient in hemophiliacs. Some plants can also be altered to grow faster, stronger, and in odd conditions. But is worth the death of young humans and the suffering of animals?

So next time you bite into a piece of corn or see a goat think to yourself, was that worth the death of a child, the suffering of a helpless animal, or my families money. Then you think whether cloning should be allowed, but the right answer is, it shouldn't. So all of you that agree that cloning is bad make