Cloning is the duplication of a living organism. This occurs in nature, with bacteria and plants, but recently scientists have found ways to replicate this process in a laboratory.

Different techniques:

Embyro cloning – is like the process of making identical twins. Cells are removed from a fertilised embryo and are made to replicate into similar cells with identical DNA. This process is widely used, and because there is no destruction of embryos combined with not much human experimentation, it is not really seen upon as a bad thing.

Reproductive cloning – is the process of creating a living duplicate of an animal. DNA is taken from an egg and is replaced with the DNA if an already living animal, which creates an exact copy of the animal.

Therapeutic cloning – is relatively the same as reproductive cloning, but once the copy has been created, its stem cells are removed. Since stem cells can grow into any type of cell, scientists are trying to use them to replace old cells.

Benefits and concerns

Benefits – there are many benefits to cloning, such as cloning could prevent diseases (using therapeutic cloning), reproductive cloning can help reproduction in endangered species.

Concerns – therapeutic cloning destroys embryos used in the process, and reproductive cloning can risk the lives of people involved. Some people say that clones will have physical and mental problems.