disadvantages of cloning animals?

Question

I need to know some disadvantages of cloning animals

Answer 1

There are at this time three major ethical concerns with cloning. Two of them will probably go away in time.

First, the process is still largely experimental. We don't know what the long-term effects of cloning a creature or an organ will be. Some have theorized that because of the way cloning is performed, produced tissues may be prematurely aged. It also bears mention that usually only a fraction of a percent of implanted clones are ever born and the rest are miscarried. Even the ones that are carried to term seem to manifest unusual pregnancies. In all, it's a risky procedure with questionable outcomes right now. But of course we're not likely to learn more unless we keep trying to some extent.

Second, as far as human and animal clones are concerned, there is a concern that the clone will be viewed by society as being identical to the original. Which, due to environmental factors (and the nature of cloning right now!) is certainly not the case. In many senses a clone is even less like the original than one identical twin is to another. A clone of Einstein might not even be interested in physics, and there's concern that he might be pressured and outed by a society that expects him to be. Not to mention the whole issue of parents cloning a 'replacement' child or pet when one dies. But again, most of these concerns spring, if anything, from a societal ignorance of the nature of clones, and is likely to go away when more clones are around for people to have experience with.

The last concern is in many ways the most nebulous. What, exactly, is life and death? Most cloned tissues used for medical research these days are obtained by removing cells from an embryo and sucking out its DNA. This essentially means the much of what made the embryo distinct no longer exists, even though all the cells (hopefully) remain alive. Arguably, this is a better fate than probably awaited the vast majority of such embryos, which are usually the result of abortions and are destroyed completely afterward. Is it moral to do this to an embryo? Does the fact that it would have died change things? These are questions that sharply divide people, and unlike the others are not likely to be resolved any time soon. If ever.

Answer 2

The disadvantages are that if you clone an animal, then they are an exact copy (of the animal that was cloned) and therefore there is no room for evolution or mutations. After a while, artificial selection can take over and there won't be as much natural selection. Also, if there is a "perfect" society(like lets say cloning humans which isn't yet possible) then no one will want to do the dirty jobs of those that have a lower education or have some disadvantage.

Also, cloning is expensive and has alow succes rate (1-2%) Clones also usually have health problems and die young.

Hope this helps:)

Answer 3

It's not very cost-effective. Cloning currently only happens in laboratories with multi-million dollar grants. Far better to allow a bull in the field with some cows and give them some hay. Very low cost there.
You run the risk of introducing mutations. Those mutations will likely spoil your cloning exercise. Keep in mind it took thousands of tries to produce Dolly, the sheep, and she died of a respiratory disease. Not sure if that was a teratogenic effect or not, but still, look at the costs.
If you look at it from the standpoint of pure reproduction, not only is it extremely costly, nature simply works better. Why? Darwin. Although he knew nothing about cloning, he pointed out 150 years ago that variation is healthy for animals. Introducing new genes allows a population to more readily withstand a new germ or a physical threat. Imagine a population composed of the same genes. If one was susceptible to a deadly virus, there goes the whole population.
Not to say that cloning is completely without benefits, but you have to look primarily at the cost and how much resilience to selecting factors (viruses, bacteria, cold spells, hunger, predators, etc.) a population produced from a single genome would possess.

Answer 4

It is unethical to us. The cloned animal could develop a new disease and we wouldn't know how to cure it, since it is a mutated disease not normal one. The products from those cloned animals might not be good for us. The animals could have plenty of deformities. And if they successfully clone animals enough, guess what is next for cloning. Us, people, to make a superhuman or something, but it took them thousands of experiments to get a working clone.

Answer 5

Animals can be born with terriable birth defects and they can live a long painful life. This is unfair for the animal.

Answer 6

the clones die soon