Cloning, like anything else, has both advantages and disadvantages, and it is polarized.
Speaking of the "benefits" of cloning, there are really many. Cloning can prolong human life; Can breed high value-added livestock; Can save endangered rare animals; It can increase agricultural output ... As far as modern science and technology are concerned, the rejection of organ transplant species is still the most troublesome thing. If the organs of the "clone" are provided to the "original", there will be no worries. So "cloning" is very helpful to medicine.
But the disadvantages of cloning still outweigh the advantages. From the level, three "levels" can be cited. First, at the ecological level, gene replication caused by cloning technology will threaten the maintenance of gene diversity, and the evolution of organisms will go through a reverse process, that is, from complex to simple, which is extremely unfavorable to the survival of organisms. Secondly, at the cultural level, human cloning is a substitute and negation of natural reproduction, which breaks the self-discipline of biological evolution and has a typical anti-natural nature. Thirdly, on the philosophical level, the realization of human self-replication and self-reproduction through cloning technology may lead to the disorder of human body-mind relationship. People's unrepeatable and irreplaceable personality rules have lost their uniqueness and the natural basis and biological premise of themselves and their personality characteristics because of a large number of copies.
What we call the advantages and disadvantages of biotechnology mainly refers to cloning, and its advantages and disadvantages are as follows.
Pro: 1) cloning technology can relieve women's pain of not being a mother.
2) The implementation of cloning experiment has promoted the development of genetics and opened up a prospect for "manufacturing" animal organs that can be transplanted into human body.
3) Cloning technology can also be used to detect fetal genetic defects. Cloned fertilized eggs are used to detect various genetic diseases, and cloned embryos have exactly the same genetic characteristics as fetuses developed in uterus.
4) Cloning technology can be used to treat nervous system injury. Adult nerve tissue has no ability to regenerate, but stem cells can repair nervous system damage.
5) In in vitro fertilization, doctors often need to implant multiple fertilized eggs into the uterus in order to choose one of them to enter the pregnancy stage. But many women can only provide one egg for fertilization. This problem can be well solved by cloning. This egg cell can be cloned into multiple cells for fertilization, thus greatly improving the success rate of pregnancy.
Disadvantages: 1) Cloning will reduce genetic variation. Individuals produced by cloning have the same genetic genes and the same disease sensitivity, and a disease can destroy the entire population produced by cloning. It is conceivable that if all cattle in a country are the same cloned product, a slight virus may destroy the animal husbandry of the whole country.
2) The use of cloning technology will make people tend to breed the most valuable individuals in the existing population, instead of promoting the survival of the fittest of the whole population according to the laws of nature. In this sense, cloning technology interferes with the natural evolution process.
3) Cloning technology is an expensive technology, which requires a lot of money and the participation of biological professionals, with a high failure rate. Dolly is the only result of 277 experiments. Although more advanced technology has been developed, the success rate can only reach 2-3%.
4) Transgenic animals increase the risk of disease transmission. For example, if a cow producing medicinal milk is infected with a virus, the virus may infect patients through milk.
5) The application of cloning technology to human body will lead to the artificial control of the genetic traits of offspring. The core of the controversy caused by cloning technology is whether genetic manipulation of human embryos can be allowed in early development. This is unacceptable to many ethicists.
6) Cloning technology can also be used to create "Superman", or people who are physically strong but mentally retarded. Moreover, if cloning technology can be effectively used in humans, men will lose their genetic significance.
7) The impact of cloning technology on family relations will also be enormous. A child born from his father's DNA clone can be regarded as his father's twin brother, but the birth time has been delayed for decades. It's hard to imagine how a person will feel when he finds himself just a copy of another person.
So technology is sometimes a double-edged sword, with advantages and disadvantages, and there is no standard answer! It's up to people to use it like this!
What we call the advantages and disadvantages of biotechnology mainly refers to cloning, and its advantages and disadvantages are as follows.