Background

• Embryo research involves experimenting on early embryos for scientific purposes such as to advance scientific knowledge about the causes of infertility, detection of abnormalities in embryos and improvements to contraception.
• Cloning involves creating an organism whose beginning is not marked by a sexual event. In simple terms, it is the artificial creation of a replica of an existing organism.
• Designer babies are those which have their characterises chosen, usually by the parents. This can seem close to eugenics, which can refer to selective breeding to ‘improve’ society.
• Germline engineering

  · This changes genes in eggs, sperm, or very early embryos.

  · This type of engineering is inheritable, meaning that the modified genes would appear not only in any children that resulted from the procedure, but in all succeeding generations.

  · This application is by far the more consequential as it could open the door to the perpetual and irreversible alteration of the human species.
• Cloning was, like most technologies today, thought impossible. The highly publicised cloning of a sheep, called Dolly by her creator, Dr. Ian Wilmut, changed the way many people thought. Dolly was the first animal to be cloned from an adult mammal. In almost every way, she was identical to her ‘mother’.
• Embryo research

  Scientists extract 'embryonic stem cells' from human embryos, mainly from those that have been left over from IVF (in vitro fertilisation)
• Embryonic stem cells

  • Those from which all the 200+ kinds of tissue in the human body originate
• Human embryo research is undertaken because animal embryos are not sufficiently compatible to be used in research affecting humans
• Aim of embryo testing

  To find cures for the diseases that affect humans, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's
• UK law allows experimentation on human embryos up to the fourteenth day, on the grounds that this is the point in an embryo's development when the individual person starts to develop
• This is potentially controversial because there are many different definitions of when a person becomes a person
• Cloning

  It is possible to make an ‘embryonic clone’ of a patient.

  · Cloning is the name given to a process by which scientists make biological duplicates of an organism.

  · The embryonic clone is destroyed in order to harvest its stem cells.

  · This is the process usually used in therapeutic cloning, and since the cells are cloned from the patient, they are less likely to be rejected by the patient’s immune system.

  · Therapeutic cloning has the potential to lead to cures for a whole range of diseases and conditions, including diabetes, stroke, arthritis, multiple sclerosis and heart failure.
• Designer babies

  Result of the editing of DNA cells or embryos
• Creating designer babies

  1. Embryo made by IVF

  2. Single cell removed from embryo and genetically tested

  3. If parents decide, embryo implanted in mother's womb or destroyed
• Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD)


  Process of genetic selection of the embryo, allows doctors to check for conditions such as Down's syndrome and cystic fibrosis
• Uses of PGD

  • Select sex of child
  • Treat sick sibling
  • Engineer intelligence and appearance of children