Using NewsHour Extra Feature Stories

Overview: NewsHour Extra features stories can help students identify and interpret key issues in current events. This activity anticipates one class period, but the follow-up essay might be assigned as homework, or in another period.

Warm Up: Use initiating questions to introduce the topic and find out how much your students know.

Main Activity: Have students read NewsHour Extra's feature story and answer the questions on the reading comprehension handout.

Discussion: Use discussion questions to encourage students to think about how the issues outlined in the story affect their lives and express and debate different opinions.

Follow-up: Students can write an 500-word editorial on the topic expressing their views and send it to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org] for possible publication.

Evaluation: Students are graded on their answers to reading comprehension questions and/or their editorial.

Story: First Stem Cells Extracted from Cloned Human Embryo, 2/17/04
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/jan-june04/clone_2-17.html

Initiating Questions:

1. What is a clone?

2. Can human beings be cloned? Should they be cloned?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

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1. Explain how the South Korean scientists created the stem cells.

The scientists took body cells from 16 women who were given hormone treatments to produce large numbers of reproductive egg cells. The body cells have two sets of chromosomes, the full genetic blueprint needed to create a human being. The scientists removed these body cells' nuclear material and placed it into the egg cells.
The result was 66 cloned eggs, in effect, human embryos, with the exact genetic makeup of the original females. The researchers grew 30 of the embryos for a week to the so-called blastocyst stage, when stem cells could be extracted.

2. Why are embryonic stem cells so interesting to scientists? How can this research be applied to medical treatments?

Embryonic stem cells are unique because they have the potential to develop into any type of tissue or cell in the body.

The research, called therapeutic cloning, could allow scientists to take a plug of skin or blood sample from a patient and use it to grow tissue, organs or batches of cells. The new cells would have the same genetic makeup as the donor and would therefore lower the risk that the injured or sick person's body would reject the new tissue.

3. Why is embryonic stem cell research controversial?

Embryonic stem cell research is controversial because harvesting the cells destroys an embryo that could have grown into a baby if implanted in a woman's uterus.

4. Why does President Bush want to limit embryonic stem cell research?

Harvesting the cells destroys an embryo that could have grown into a baby if implanted in a woman's uterus.

President Bush is against making and destroying human embryos.

"The use of embryos to clone is wrong. We should not as a society, grow life to destroy it," he said in 2001.

5. How is reproductive cloning different from therapeutic cloning?

In reproductive cloning, which has been performed with animals but not people, the embryos are implanted in the womb and allowed to develop into a fetus. In therapeutic cloning, the embryos are never implanted, but are grown for a few days in the laboratory so that the stem cells can be extracted.

6. Why hasn't the United States banned human reproductive cloning?

While many U.S. lawmakers would like to ban human reproductive cloning, the debate is complicated by the question of whether to allow therapeutic cloning. Conservative lawmakers have attached bans on embryonic stem cell research to all bills regarding reproductive and therapeutic cloning, preventing Congress from coming up with a clear policy.

 

Discussion Activity (more research might be needed):

1. Pretend that you are a member of Congress. The issue of cloning has come across your desk and you need to come up with a policy of how you would vote on the issue. What is your policy? Would you allow some kinds of cloning but not others? Would you allow any and all kinds of cloning? Write and explain your policy.

2. How is cloning portrayed in movies (The Matrix, Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, Austin Powers' mini-me, etc.)? What are the connections between the entertainment industry's idea of cloning and real life?

3. Extension activity: Have you ever wanted to discover a cure for a disease? Who works on medical research (doctors, scientists, technicians)? What diseases would you work to cure? What kind of training would you need? Contact a medical school or research lab in your state and talk to researchers about their work-- what is exciting about it, what is frustrating, etc.

Write a 300-500 word essay on any of these topics providing clear examples. Send your completed editorial to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org]. Exceptional essays might be published on our Web site.