Therapeutic Cloning

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In therapeutic cloning, the desired end is not an individual organism, but various types of mature cells. Therapeutic cloning is used to learn more about how cell specialization occurs and to provide cells and tissues that could be used to treat human illnesses, such as diabetes, spinal cord injuries, and Parkinson disease. Therapeutic can be carried out in several ways. The most common method is to isolate embryonic stem cells and subject them to treatments that cause them to become particular cell types, like red blood cells, muscle cells, or nerve cells. Because embryonic stem cells have the ability to become any other type of cell in an organism, they are totipotent. It may be possible to produce entire tissues and organs from totipotent stem cells, but there are ethical concerns about this type of therapeutic cloning because if the embryo had continued development, it would have become an individual. Another way to carry out therapeutic cloning is to use adult stem cells found in many organs of an adult's body. They are said to be multipotent since they have already started to specialize and are not able to produce every type of cell in the organism.