Should the United States Continue to Allow Cloning

I stand in firm affirmation of the topic of debate: Should the United States Continue to Allow Cloning? For clarification of the round, I would like to present a few definitions:1. ) Should: Used in auxiliary function to express obligation, propriety, or expediency. (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)2. ) Allow: To regard or treat (something) as acceptable. (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)3. ) Cloning: To make an exact copy of (a person, animal, or plant). (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)I would now like to present one observation for this round: Observation: The topic looks specifically to the United States thus limiting the places in which we are able to acquire the evidence from for this is an issue looking towards the United States specifically. To support my claim, I would like to present one main contention. Contention 1. ) Cloning Animal Models. The ultimate purpose of cloning is to make a copy of an organism. An example of a type of organism that can be cloned are animal models. First off, let's start by identifying what an animal model is. An animal model is: An animal sufficiently like humans in its anatomy, physiology, or response to a pathogen to be used in medical research in order to obtain results that can be extrapolated to human medicine. (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)Some of the most common (if not the most common) type of animal model is that of mice. If we are able to clone mice effectively, then we could potentially figure out how to fix some of the genetics-related issues that we as humans have. According to the University of Utah's Health Sciences, "Much of what researchers learn about human disease comes from studying animal models such as mice. Often, animal models are genetically engineered to carry disease-causing mutations in their genes. Creating these transgenic animals is a time-intensive process that requires trial-and-error and several generations of breeding. Cloning could help reduce the time needed to make a transgenic animal model, and the result would be a population of genetically identical animals for study. " However, the issue is that of effective cloning of mice (in this case). This issue is not too large as shown from a research done from Japan. According to an article entitled "Mouse Cloning Using a Drop of Peripheral Blood" which was published the US journal "Biology of Reproduction" in June 26th 2013, it states that, "Following SCNT using randomly selected leukocyte nuclei, cloned offspring were born at a 2.8% birth rate. Fluorescence-activated cell sorting revealed that granulocytes/monocytes and lymphocytes could be roughly distinguished by their sizes, the former being significantly larger. We then cloned putative granulocytes/monocytes and lymphocytes separately, and obtained 2.1% and 1.7% birth rates, respectively (P > 0.05). Because the use of lymphocyte nuclei inevitably results in the birth of offspring with DNA rearrangements, we applied granulocyte/monocyte cloning to two genetically modified strains and two recombinant inbred strains. " In basic terms, the method used for cloning was similar (if not identical) to the method used on Dolly the sheep. True that this evidence shows that percentage of success is low, however the results of quantity and quality are a different story. Later on, Dr. Wakayama of the Riken Centre for Developmental Biology, Kobe, Japan led a research with other Japanese researchers were able to successfully clone 581 mice in 25 rounds of cloning that were all fertile, gave birth to healthy pups and lived for about two years, similar to mice conceived in the normal way. According to the researchers, "Our results show there were no accumulations of epigenetic or genetic abnormalities in the mice, even after repeated cloning. " However, this was not all for they also released the fact that they added a naturally occurring chemical called trichostatin. Doing this allowed for the cloning efficiency to increase sixfold with no reduction to the actual success rate. All of this was according to the information released in the journal "Cell Stem Cell. " Eventually, the medical technology will improve and will improve at extremely fast rates (faster than now) gradually allowing us to increase that efficiency level even more. If we are able to do so, then we could quickly find ways to eliminate the genetic issues or diseases that we as humans have. Thus for the aforementioned reason, I affirm.