Risks of Cloning

What Is Cloning?
Cloning is the process of creating a social being that has the same DNA as the other. As a productive process, cloning strives to cure diseases by obtaining the stem cells, rather than for other purposes.

Cloning – The Risks
Though cloning has widely been accepted as an innovative process, there are certain risks involved, those of which are presented below:

1. Inefficient Process
Somatic cell nuclear transfer which is one of the two ways to carry out a cloning process has proved to be unsuccessful in most cases. Various factors that attribute to this cause include the following:

• To start with, the maternity itself might be a possible failure.
• There might be no compatibility between the nucleus that has been transferred and the egg that has been enucleated.
• There might be no proper development of the egg which has the nucleus that has been newly transferred.
• Also, there are chances of failure when the embryo is being implanted into the foster mother.

These failure rates are reported to range from 97 percent to even 99.9 percent at times. Hence, it is obvious that a lot of effort has been put forward for futile positive results.

2. Unnatural Cistron Patterns
Though the clones look alike, there are uncertainties as to whether the right cistron (gene) would be expressed at the right time. It is important to note that while a cloning process is carried out, the nucleus that is being transferred has to be reprogrammed in such a way so as to make an impression that it belongs to an early cell. As compared to a naturally created embryo, the nucleus which has been transferred behaves as programmed by the scientist concerned. Whereas, in an embryo that has been naturally created, there are distinct programs for each differentiated cell according to which the DNA expresses the gene. Hence the programming of the transferred nucleus exclusively lies in the hands of the scientist and it is up to him to make the transferred nucleus behave like a natural one.

3. Trouble During Growth
The life span of the cloned animals is found to be comparatively less as compared to their counterparts, in most cases. Also, it has been reported that cloned animals often have large organs during their birth. This condition where the cloned animals are bigger than their counterparts is referred to as the "Large Offspring Syndrome" by scientists. Clones with such a syndrome not only have large organs but also those organs are quite abnormal. This can effectively interrupt the metabolic activities in the clone that could possibly give rise to various other problems including suffocation. There are also clones which do not have this LOS, yet, they develop malformations in the brain and in the kidney which could pose a greater threat in the later stage.

4. Contracting Telomeres
Telomeres are basically sequences of DNA present at the either ends of a chromosome. It has been scientifically proved that these telomeres contract in length each time the DNA gets copied. This consequently results in the reduced length of the chromosomes. It is evident that as the animal gets older and older, its telomeres shrink further, which becomes a natural phenomenon in ageing. Hence there arises an issue as to what might happen to the clone whose nucleus that has been transferred is quite old, and are there any chances that this could lead to the shortened lifespan of the clone.

However, the experiments carried out provide no accurate results. Surprisingly, a cloned cow and a mouse proved to have relatively longer telomeres than their counterparts. The cells of these animals promised to have a widened lifespan. Whereas in the case of Dolly the sheep, the telomeres seemed to have been contracted, as a result of which, it aged faster than a normal sheep.

Hence, the cloning technology brings with it quite a considerable number of risks. Continuous research is being done to eliminate these risks and make it a productive technology with remote chances of failure.