Biosciences

A chemical compound originating in the physiologic processes of a living organism.

Human cloning might produce many benefits. Human therapeutic cloning could provide genetically identical cells for regenerative medicine, and tissues and organs for transplantation. Such cells, tissues, and organs would neither trigger an immune response nor require the use of immunosuppressive drugs. Both basic research and therapeutic development for serious diseases such as cancer, heart disease, and diabetes, as well as improvements in burn treatment and reconstructive and cosmetic surgery, are areas that might benefit from such new technology. Human reproductive cloning also might produce benefits. Antinori and Zavos hope to create a fertility treatment that allows parents who are both infertile to have children with at least some of their DNA in their offspring. Some scientists, including Dr. Richard Seed, suggest that human cloning might obviate the human aging process. How this might work is not entirely clear since the brain or identity would have to be transferred to a cloned body. Dr. Preston Estep has suggested the terms "replacement cloning" to describe the generation of a clone of a previously living person, and "persistence cloning" to describe the production of a cloned body for the purpose of obviating aging, although he maintains that such procedures currently should be considered science fiction.

The total epigenetic state of a cell. Epigenetics is study of the processes involved in the genetic development of an organism, especially the activation and deactivation of genes; and the study of heritable changes caused by the activation and deactivation of genes without any change in DNA sequence.