Is Pet Cloning Acceptable?

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Is Pet Cloning Acceptable?

 

Photo by Veterinary Practice News

Losing a beloved pet can be very heartbreaking as they are members of the family. Controversy arises when the advancing DNA technology allows mourning families to clone their dog or cat, so that they can relive cherished memories with their new cloned pet. Some believe that cloning shouldn’t be allowed since cloning animals for commercial purposes is ethically wrong, while others are for it in order to bring back their dearest pets. 

A company called ViaGen Pets is one of the only places in the world that permit pet cloning. It costs about $50,000 to clone a dog, while it costs $35,000 to clone a cat and there are no guarantees that the long cloning process is successful in producing viable embryos. The process of cloning first involves extracting tissue samples from the original pet while it’s still alive, or shortly after its death. The pet’s cells are transferred into a DNA-less oocyte from a donor animal. The new hybrid cell is then stimulated with an electric shock to make it divide and it is implanted into a surrogate, which will give birth to the cloned pet.

Barbara Streisand, a widely known celebrity, is one of individuals that support pet cloning as she cloned her dog Samantha after she died in 2017. Barbara had a Coton de Tulear and wanted to keep some part of her treasured dog with her. She turned to cloning and the lab managed to produce three clones of her original dog. Although cloned dogs may have the same appearance of the original, they will likely not have the exact same disposition or personality and certainly not the same soul.

Pet cloning leads to questions such as can human cloning be done for mourning families or can the technology be used to eventually create a type of designer human. In addition, pet cloning is only available for wealthier individuals due to the hefty price tag of such a process. It is best to halt cloning technology before it gets too out of hand. Society doesn’t need to clone pets, since there are so many beautiful dogs and cats in shelters that need homes. People should focus on how you can open your home to many different loyal, lovable animals throughout their short lifespans.

Posted by “Lauren Shone” (3)

Antibiotics for All

Many of us living in the Western world have had our fair share of experiences with antibiotics: you get sick, you take the pills, you get better. But that reality comes with the steep requirement that you, the person taking them, have a fully functional immune system. What would happen to someone that lacked that and were entirely immunocompromised? As it turns out, even the most commonplace of infections could prove fatal to those types of individuals. Even more shocking, those same antibiotics that you or I take, do little to nothing for people suffering immune deficiency.

Traditionally, if someone with immune deficiency falls ill to an infection, from the moment of the diagnosis onward, the clock is ticking. It takes extreme detail and precise targeting of the microbiological infection to give the patient a hope of surviving. Under many circumstances, death is an expected outcome. Up until recently, it wasn't know of that there existed other routes of treatment, and people just wish for the best with what medicine was available. A new compound derived from eushearilide may be the answer to those wishes. It has been seen in recent studies to possess antibacterial and antifungal properties, capable of treating infections of the lung, meningitis, and encephalitis.

This compound, usharelide, formed from 23-demethyleushearilide, has two variations that have been documented to hold these antimicrobial properties and can be used to help those with acute and time sensitive infections, such as patients with compromised immune systems. A particularly interesting observation too is that it has been shown to be effective against Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) which is actually resistant against methicillin. Usharelide, being effective against this antibiotic-resistant and extremely lethal infection (for those with immune deficiency), is already showing its extreme potential for use and value in the medical world. An issue still, however, is that many of the properties of this fungal derived treatment are still unknown and little research is being done in the scientific community to uncover them. Many people and professionals in the medical community are still ignorant to the potentially life-saving abilities of this compound despite it first being observed over a decade ago. Like many things in the scientific world, this potentially life-changing for many discovery, should definitely be more pursued by research so that the world may one day be able to fully benefit from all of its untapped potentials.

Posted by Brian Lee (2)

Are Plants Capable of Memory?

To us, memory is almost instantly associated with the brain-and rightly so. It is where memories are formed, changed, and recalled. Any stimulus creates a series of neuron activity. In the case of memory recollection, specific groups of neurons are reactivated in response to a specific stimulus. However, the plasticity of the brain also means the synapses involved can be changed, removed, or added to in these pathways. But what about organisms without brains? Are they capable of forming and recalling memories like animals? Monica Gagliano from the University of Western Australia thinks she may have found an organism that can. 

Photo by blickwinkel, Alamy

Mimosa pudica is a plant commonly known for its highly-sensitive leaves. The slightest touch or movement can trigger them to curl together. Gagliano wanted to investigate this phenomenon further to see if plants could use memory to change their behavior. To do this, she built a device that dropped potted plants roughly six inches onto a piece of foam. The height was not nearly enough to cause physical harm, yet the M. pudica were still disturbed enough to close their leaves. She repeated the drop 60 times in a row for each of her plants. Surprisingly, by the end of the 60 drops, M. pudica kept their leaves completely open. And they continued to show this behavior after waiting as many as 28 days between drop series. It is also interesting to note that while the vertical drop would no longer signal M. pudica leaves to close, moving the plants abruptly in other directions would. 

These results hint at the possibility that memory retention may not only be unique to the neural pathways found in the brain. Plants do not have brains, but they “‘do possess a sophisticated… signaling network.’” Gagliano has been dismissed by some biologists who are skeptical about the idea of intelligent plants. Others do not like the idea of further blurring the line between plant and animal. What do you think? To me, since what we know is always changing in the scientific community, I’m interested to see if anyone else attempts to elaborate on these new findings.

Posted by "Meagan Gustafson" (2)