The Ethics of GMOs and Cloning

GMOs, or genetically modified organisms, have become something of a buzz word in today's society. With their increasing popularity in food, some of their meaning has become a mystery. Here, we will explore what GMOs are, along with cloning, and the ethical considerations we need to make before supporting them.

What are GMOs?

A GMO is a genetically modified organism. Every living thing on Earth has DNA and genetic material that determines its species, behavior, and appearance. Using biotechnology, genes can be edited to fit the preferences of scientists or companies interested in genetic manipulation and GMOs. It is important to establish the difference between GMOs and breeding, as they lead to two different results.

Selective breeding includes choosing the best genetic options and breeding them together forcibly. This can, over time, lead to more favorable offspring. On the other hand, GMOs are forcibly changed while living to meet the needs of the gene editor. The ethical concerns from GMOs generally arise as a result of the living organism being changed when it cannot give the testers or gene editors permission.

What is cloning?

Clones are organisms that are exact copies of each other's DNA. Clones can be natural: identical twins are essentially clones with a few mutations. But they can also be unnatural or manmade which is usually what we think of when the word cloning is mentioned. Cloning a being means to copy its entire genetic material into an embryo. But there are two types of cloning.

1. Artificial Embryo Twinning: an early-stage embryo is separated into two different cells on a petri dish. Once these cells develop enough, they are both placed in two different surrogate mothers. While this method is effective for creating twins and genetic copies who are both currently living at the same time, artificial embryo twinning cannot clone only one organism; its result is always two.

2. Somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT): this method produces the same result as artificial embryo twinning but also produces a clone of the original organism. A somatic cell is a cell that is not the reproductive cells, like the egg or sperm. It could be a blood cell, a brain cell, or a muscle cell. In a SCNT, the somatic cell is removed from the body. Then, the nucleus is taken out of the cell. After adjustment, the nucleus is transferred to an egg cell, where the clone is then born from a surrogate mother.

Ethical Concerns

Safety is perhaps the biggest concern with GMOs, gene editing, and cloning. Often, the concern is not with how the procedures will go, but potential unintended after-effects or genetic defects as a result. As a result, for cloning to occur now, there are many legal hoops that scientists and researchers need to jump through. However, cloning and gene editing for clinical reasons has been completely agreed upon as immoral and unsafe for the patient. While cloning and gene editing have not yet made their way to healthcare, it will be interesting in the coming years to see how the science progresses and whether genetic diseases can potentially be treated or cured with genetic editing