Government Affiliation and Cloning Essay -- Biology Medical Biomedical

Government Affiliation and Cloning Abstract The theory to alter and duplicate a human being first arose in the early 1900s. It became widely controversial since the entrance of the experiments on real animals by the 1990s. Influenced by its citizens, the governments all over the world stepped in to regulate the new process by establishing specific laws tackling the issue. Each government differed from the others, and hence, each national law varies from another. However, attempts were made to unify the regulations under international circumstances in organizations such as the United Nations. Still undergoing conformation, the effort to halt cloning failed to stay constant, and would continue to change in the future. Since the successful cloning of the sheep Dolly in Roslin Institution of Scotland on July 5, 1996 (Peters, 2003, p.161), governments wrestled with the ideal of human cloning. Thrust with the responsibility to regulate a new form of artificial mammalian reproduction, and possibly human reproduction, the government became the deciding factor amidst the storm of controversy. Dolly signifies the first mammal cloned from the fully differentiated cell, which already had the genes of its function fully expressed. It allowed the duplication of another individual from any living cell of body. Ian Wilmut announced and patented the Roslin Technique, the method to clone Dolly, on February 22, 1997 and explained the details on the issue of Nature five days later (Peters, 2003, p.161). The reaction was immediate. Within hours of Wilmut’s announcement, the Church of Scotland released its rebuttal, criticizing the event as unethical. Likewise, the world was quick to establish its stance, pron ouncing the cloning of human as mora... ...e Government Affiliation 5 answer is simply democracy in action. Surely, the population will voice its opinion upon the matter, and whatever the majority of this generation decides, it will be enforced peacefully. Even as the times change-- people’s opinion change—it is still sure that the voices of the public will be heard. Government Affiliation 6 Bibliography NCSL. (2005, June). State Human Cloning Law. 7-27-05: http://www.ncsl.org/programs/health/Genetics/rt-shcl.htm. Peters, Ted. 2003. Playing God? New York and London: Routledge. Stanford. (2001, December). International Cloning Policy. Human Cloning- Cloning Policy. 7-24-05: http://www.stanford.edu/~eclipse9/sts129/cloning/policy.html. United Nations. (2005, May). Ad Hoc Committee on an International Convention Against the Reproduction Cloning of Human Beings. 7-28-05: http://www.un.org/law/cloning/.