Therapeutic cloning refers to the creation an embryo with a genome matching that of a single individual. The embryo is not implanted in a womb to develop into a baby; instead, its development is arrested at a very early stage when it is a ball of identical cells, or a blastocyst. The cells are stem cells that can be used as regenerative medicine treatments in the person from whom the blastula or blastocyst was made.
Society, in general, seems more open to the idea of therapeutic cloning. But so far, the same cannot be said of reproductive cloning, where the embryo is implanted and brought to term. Someone might opt for reproductive cloning based purely on narcissism, but it also could be useful to someone with fertility problems when standard treatments do not work.
The most widely-used cloning strategy is called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). It’s a mouthful, but the name describes exactly what happens: A somatic cell is any cell in your body, other than a gamete cell (an egg or a sperm), specialized to function in particular tissues and contains your entire genome. In SCNT, the nucleus of a somatic cell is transferred to a donated egg cell whose own nucleus has been removed. The new egg cell can be triggered to act as a fertilized egg, producing a blastula whose cells are clones of the donor of the nucleus.
Thus, if a woman’s egg cells were destroyed by radiation therapy, for instance, or if she is postmenopausal and has no more eggs, it’s theoretically possible to make her a child using one of her somatic cells, say from her skin or stomach.
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