DISYA • RAHMATIARA

Cloning is a technique to make offspring with the same genetic code as its parent in certain living creatures in the form of plants, animals, and humans. The technique was found in 1997 by Dr. Ian Willmut, a Scottish scientist, who made a sheep cell that has been engineered into a sheep without a male sheep fertilizing. Scottish scientists engineered sheep, named Dolly.

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In January 2008, Dr. Samuel Wood and Andrew French, head of the laboratory of scientific employees Stemagen Corporation in California USA, announced that they managed to create five adult human embryos using DNA from adult skin cells. However, Dr. Wood says that although possible, using the technology for reproductive cloning is unethical and illegal. So it can be concluded that cloning technique used in human cloning is not considered safe and effective. It is precisely to be dehumanizing because of the risk of damage is still very high. It is unethical for the results to be achieved by the program was still far less than the risk of damage produced by the cloning technique.

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The purpose of cloning is to create new creatures, so many believe this is an attempt to "playing GOD" which cannot be justified. This sparked a controversy about cloning in different parts of the world. Various groups reacted strongly that if this technology is applied to humans, it really cloning technology cannot be justified morally. Cloning technology in humans will lead to so many ethical and moral issues very seriously. One example of the prohibition of cloning technology in humans appeared on the National Bioethics Advisory Commission (United States) which states that: "For the moment, it is morally unacceptable when someone is trying to create a child using the technique of somatic cell nuclear transfer cloning, both personally and in general, both in research or within clinical scope ". The same thing happens in the EU (Europe Union) Parliament that prohibits any member states against human cloning. Nevertheless, the debate on cloning in humans continues.

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Back to the topic, the cloning of Dolly the sheep is the technology of transferring cell nuclear reproductive cloning. In this type of reproduction, DNA derived from an animal ovum cell which is removed and replaced with DNA derived from somatic cells (skin, hair, etc.) other adult animals. So, the sheep cloned a sheep vegetative breeding results because the ovum is not fertilized by sperm. Cloning will be successful if the nucleus is transplanted into a cell that will produce the embryo (ovum) included Germ cells. Germ cells are cells that grow the eggs of sperm. In conclusion, if we'd want to clone a human being, we'd have to know a lot more about reprogramming and how to make it 100 percent efficient because based on what Wilmut said: " It was distressing enough to see hyperventilating and regularly passing in an animal. I wouldn’t want to be the person who looked a cloned child in the face and said ‘very sorry.’"

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How to clone Dolly the sheep conducted by Dr. Ian Willmut are as follows:

1. Take the ovum cell in the ovary ewes, and took the mammary glands of another ewe.

2. Removing the haploid ovum nucleus.

3. Insert a mammary gland cell into ovum that has no nucleus again.

4. The ovum is returned to its original parent uterus sheep (sheep egg donors).

5. The ovum-containing cells of the mammary gland is inserted into the uterus of sheep, and the sheep shall conceive and bear children result from cloning.