- Volume No.:
- 211
- Editor:
- Lisa Firth
- Binding:
- Paperback
- Publisher:
- Independence Educational Publishers
- Replaces Issue:
- Vol. 144 The Cloning Debate
Go to: Key Facts - Table of Contents
Key Facts
- Researchers have managed to transfer human genes that produce useful proteins into sheep and cows, so that they can produce, for instance, the blood clotting agent factor IX to treat haemophilia.
(page 7) - Most of the ethical concerns about cloning relate to the possibility that it might be used to clone humans. (page 8)
- Cloning involves collecting a cell from the animal that is to be cloned (called the ‘donor cell’) and transferring it into an egg cell that has been removed from another animal. (page 10)
- Nearly half (45%) of the British public say that they would not personally be happy to eat or drink food products from a cloned animal, compared to only 34% who would, a poll has discovered. (page 11)
- Britain’s food safety watchdog has admitted it doesn’t know how many cloned embryos have entered Britain after meat produced from cloned cows ended up in food. (page 15)
- While there is no evidence that consuming products from healthy clones, or their offspring, poses a food safety risk, meat and products from clones and their offspring are considered novel foods and would therefore need to be authorised before being placed on the market. (page 17)
- In vitro meat is an animal flesh product that has never been part of a living animal. Cells are taken from a live animal and grown into muscle tissue in a laboratory. These cells form stem cells which are programmed to produce muscle. (page 20)
- Human reproductive cloning is the creation of an individual who has identical nuclear genetic material (DNA) to an existing human being, and who is allowed to develop to term and beyond. (page 24)
- Scientists are trying to find ways to grow stem cells in the laboratory and make them generate specific cell types so they can be used to treat injury or disease. (page 29)
- Some say that embryonic stem cells have no moral status. But others disagree because they were created by destroying a human embryo, arguing that the same limits on what the embryo can be used for must apply also to whatever uses the cells would subsequently be put to. (page 34)
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Biotechnology
What is biotechnology?, Emerging biotechnologies, Europeans and biotechnology in 2010: winds of change?.
Chapter 2 Animal Cloning
Animal cloning, Timeline of domestic species cloned, Q&A on cloning of animals for food, Cloned cows, ‘If anything, this milk will be better quality’, Food watchdog admits tracking cloned cows ‘impossible’, Cloned animals and their offspring, Cloned British meat is ‘safe’, More evidence required on cloning, In vitro meat, Why I’d happily eat lab-grown meat.
Chapter 3 Human Cloning
Therapeutic cloning (somatic cell nuclear transfer), Reproductive cloning, What are stem cells?, Stem cell research: hope or hype?, First ‘saviour sibling’ stem cell transplant performed in UK, Aborted fetal tissue used in stem cell trial – no thank you, New ethical challenges in stem cell research, Look, no embryos! The future of ethical stem cells, ‘I travelled in hope to stem cell clinic’.
