Cloning in plants is an old practice, as in lancing a stem and growing a new plant. Now that they have started with animals, animals life expectancy is very low. Perhaps, in the future, they will better be able to do so, in case in the future there is a food shortage supply, but morally, in people, I don't agree with cloning. See the movie "The Island" with Ewen Mcgregor and you will see why I feel this way
Many living things naturally use CLONING as a method of reproducing themselves, such as many plants. This is called asexual reproduction ,meaning having one parent and so it involves no sex. Because it had only one parent then the offspring of asexual reproduction are a clone (copy) of their lone parent as they receive its full genome only.There is no other input! This is natural for all the asexual reproduction species. Sexual reproduction on the other hand means having two parents and the offspring being different to either parent as they have a random assortment of genes inherited from both parents that make up their personal genome. So cloning of sexual reproducing species is totally unnatural but of course scientists don,t seem to know when to stop experimenting . There are now several methods of cloning but the established one iwas to take an unfertilised ovum, remove its nucleus ,which contains its(haploid) dna and put in another diploid nucleus from anothers body cell. Then the ovum when put into the "mother to be" ,believes itself to be fertilised because it has a full compliment of the species dna (diploid number) and so it starts the process of cell division and differentiation, The ovum is "tricked". BUT the transferred dna from a body cell put into its nucleus is OLD DNA. That is ,it has divided and divided many times over and has therefore inherited miscopyings along the way. Shortened telemeres etc. It is not "the FRESH" dna of the gametes ,that is of the ovum and the sperm and so the future offspring is extremely disadvantaged as well as "tricked" and as well as being abnormal. There is lots to this cloning lark! Some people have paid to have their cat cloned for example. Well apart from misery of many animals involved in this process, one CANNOT have their cat brought BACK to life. It is impossible. For starters it is not 100 per cent identical genetically as the original cat because of the different maternal mitochondria BUT we are ALL a product not only of our genes but also of our environment and that begins in the uterus or womb. So the clone is experiencing different intra uterine conditions from the original. That is before it is even born!! The copy or clone will never live the same set of circumstances as its lone parent did. Life experiences are individual. It is a hugh topic and I do not believe that we should be going there with species that reproduce sexually. Man should be using precious funds looking instead at all the causes of the big epidemics of modern times, ie heart disease and cancers and seeking ways of banishing these causes. That would be money well spent.
