Primate Clones and the Advancement in Primate Testing By Madeleine Nix

While looking through the news articles on the scientific feeds I came across one with a title of “First Primate Clones Produced Using the “Dolly” Method”. I was automatically intrigued. With learning about genes and DNA in class I was interested in this news article about clones. I learned about the Dolly Method in high school, so I knew what this article was researching and what their out comes were. They are creating animal clones with artificial DNA. In this article they used a technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer. “Which involves the scientist swapping the nucleus of a downer cell into a fertilized egg that has been purged of its own chromosomes.” The egg then will create an exact copy of the donor’s genome and if planted into a surrogate mother, the eventual offspring will be a clone. This technique has been used on many animals, all have had successful cloning and are just as healthy as the non-clone cousins. There are reasons for the cloning, with primates they are the closet to human DNA. With the clones they can produce substantial amounts of primates to start to test human diseases and hopefully finding cures to them. But, there are many concerns that have stopped the progress of clones. Even the same problems from a decade ago when Dolly was first created. Which makes clones an object of debate and discussion in the scientist world. Ethics, resources, facilities, are all things that are inhibiting the growth of primate clone testing. The technology is there, it has been for years. Most of the problems they face is the ethics part of the research. Which I have torn feelings about. The U.S has stopped most of all their primate testing. As the public does not like our close genetic relatives to be tested on. In some places there are law set in place to stop these research techniques. The another part that is limiting the growth of reserch is the resources. Some scientist say that it would take to much time and money to make this effective. With expertise in assisted reproductive technologies, reproductive physiology—and a large cohort of donors which is not readily available currently. There are so many things keeping this from moving forward. I think that a time will come that this will become a necessary thing. As more diseases are showing up. Cancer being seen more often in all ages. Brain disease starting younger. Birth defects becoming more common, there are things humanity will need to start advancing their research on and finding cures for. Primate cloning might be the answer to allow scientist to get a larger outlook on finding options for cures for our problems in larger scales. It is ready to be put in action, but I do not think it will be happening anytime soon. Not until the people fighting the ethics part of this will start to understand the need for it. And I hope that if there comes a time that this is one of the last options to do this kind of extensive research then I hope that it will move forward.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/first-primate-clones-produced-using-the-ldquo-dolly-rdquo-method/