Animal Cloning: Yay or Nay?

What if you could have an exact replica of yourself? Not like a twin, but someone who resembles you completely yet is born from a different mother and at a different time? Though human cloning hasn’t yet been proven possible, animal cloning experiments have been going on for more than twenty years now. If you weren’t aware, cloning is the act of withdrawing the chosen genetic genes of a male and female animal, then implanting said genes into a surrogate female animal. If the egg develops properly in the surrogate animal, the baby will be born healthy and will have inherited all chosen genes from the gene donors.

The real question is, is animal cloning, in general, good or bad for our society?

Presently, cloning is used for farmers who raise animals, such as cows, and need strong cows that produce a large amount of milk. Well what’s wrong with this? Many believe that since animal cloning isn’t natural, it is wrong for farmers to use this method for the benefit of their bank account. However, cloning isn’t as reliable a form of reproduction that we make it to be. Many cloned animals are born with birth defects, which can result in the animal dying very early. Currently, the survival rate for cloned animals is close to 5%. Not to mention, cloning any animal is expensive—the price for just one cow is $20,000! Additionally, one main birth defect includes the cloned animal being too large in the womb, and therefore harming the surrogate animal carrying the clone as it develops. If the clone dies in the womb and the surrogate animal has a miscarriage, this can negatively affect the surrogate animal emotionally as well as physically. 

With current technologies, the only pros to cloning would be to improve production of food, such as eggs or milk. The technology of cloning hasn’t developed to the point where we can clone humans, save an entire endangered species, bring back an extinct species, end world hunger, or even create supplies of organs for people needing transplants. As bad as it may sound, I believe that we should stop cloning now before it develops even further. Think about the number of animals that will have to die until we get to a point where cloning is reliable. 

Scientists have been researching and performing tests since before 1996, and progress is very slow.

The development of cloning comes with a whole list of related problems: ensuring rights for cloned animals and humans, new diseases, and implications of identical genes.

Our world has many issues already, such as lack of resources, severe climate change, and more. I don’t understand why we need to move forward with—what is in my opinion—unnecessary developments, if it’s at the expense of death.

Though there will be pros to cloning in the future, such as increased food production, Earth can’t handle the population growing so quickly. Not to mention, we have bigger issues to focus on in our world, like discrimination and war. Protests against animal cloning have already started, and more protests will occur as time goes on. Who knows, maybe in the future current problems with cloning will be gone, but there are still plenty of years to come before that can happen.