Future+of+Cloning

__Welcome to The Future!__

The same expierment that created Dolly the sheep has huge positive implications for expanding the technology to new areas such as disease prevention, treatment, and possibly curing diseases. With cloning technology, we may someday live in a world with less diseases and a better possibility of a long healthy life. The purpose of developing this technology is to simply increase the quality of life. Diabetes cure, skin grafts, and gene thearpy are all possible future implications of this technology that can be used to increase our quality of life (National Institutes of Health, 1998).

 __Diabetes__

Diabetes is a disease where the body does not produce enough insulin to move glucose from your blood into your body cells. Glucose is a form of sugar that the body uses for energy. It is very important and needed for survival. Insulin is a hormone produced by the pancreas that allows glucose to pass from blood to your cells. Essential, insulin is a regulator of your glucose (National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse, 2008).

Patients with diabetes have a decreased number of insulin producing cells, and thus cannot produce the required amount of insulin. All that would be needed to cure diabetes is to simply increase the amount of insulin producing cells. But how? The answer is cloning! Using cloning technology, we could take the present insulin producing cells and make an exact copy in the lab. We would then transplant these cells back into the patient with diabetes in order to increase their insulin producing cell count. Because the cells are of the same exact genetic makeup of the patient, there is no fear of the body rejecting the transplant. The patients body would now be able to create the correct amount of insulin on its own, therefore curing the patient (National Institutes of Health, 1998).  __Skin Grafts__

Patients that have experienced serious burns often times need to get skin grafts. In most cases, skin is taken from other parts of the body and used to cover the affected areas. However, when a patient is severly burnt, there is usually not enough skin available to be taken. In this case, Doctors will use skin from cadavers or skin cells grown in tissue culture to replace the missing skin. Unfortunetly because the skin is gentically different from the patient, it is eventually rejected by the body. This means that a patient must undergo skin grafting numerous times during their life (National Institutes of Health, 1998).

Cloning puts an end to this problem. Cloning can be used to create skin grafts that are genetically identical to the patient (because it is a clone of the patients skin). In fact, with cloning technlogy, identical skin can be created with almost any of the patients cells. With genetically identical skin, the patients body will not reject the skin graft and the patient can live a normal life without the need for future grafts (National Institutes of Health, 1998).  __Gene Thearpy__

Gene thearpy is the act of replacing a persons defected gene with a working one. It could mean a cure for genetic diseases or at least a preventative for genetic diseases. Right now, scientists are unable to figure out a way to insert the working gene back into the patients body without it being rejected. This is where cloning comes into play. It is believed that cloning technology could be used to remove a cell from a patient with a broken gene, replace the gene with a working one, then cloning the cells over and over again to be eventually transplanted back into the patient. Because the cells are genetically identical, the body will not reject the transplant and the patient could be healed of a genetic disease (National Institutes of Health, 1998).