Preventing a Brave New World |
Abstract Leon Kass’s provides a compelling article on why the world should ban cloning. Kass’ article, “Preventing a Brave New World”, provides Kass’ theories of if society progresses on its current path, society would start to turn to cloning as an alternative to typical reproduction. Cloning offers a way to design an offspring rather than the typical experience of child raising. Kass believes if cloning is not banned, society will be more dependent upon technology and be at technologies whim.
Preventing a Brave New World In "Preventing a Brave New World", Leon Kass concludes that reproductive and therapeutic cloning of human embryos is unethical. He provides several thoughts as to why
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If the practice of cloning were not banned, it would lead to a society where the people could not even reproduce without the use of technology. Society would lose possession of their offspring. Offspring would no longer be genetic of a “mother and father”, rather they would be compiled of a genetic makeup that the designer though was perfect. Many people only view cloning from the point of view of the outsider and not the clone. Kass points out how the clone would feel living in a world of people that were conceived the natural way. The spawn would be consistently compared to the “adult” version. All of the “adult’” shortcomings would be immediately addressed with the clone. The clone would not have a typical father or a mother. The clone would also not have a purpose in life other than living in the shadow of the “adult” half. Kass points to this in itself as an ethical issue. Kass believes it is not fair to the clone to live a life with this type of uncertainty when living in a world of people who were born “normal”.
Kass believes banning the practice of cloning would be an achievable task. The process of cloning involves a complex process and not many scientists can perform the procedure. Identifying the scientists who can perform this procedure and enforcing their practice would be an effective way of banning cloning. Others believe this would still not work. Banning cloning would only drive the practice underground. With
Cloning is inhumane and unethical because it creates animals and embryos that will be used for painful research experiments. Additionally, a painful surgery is required to remove the eggs from the breeding stock and implant the embryos back into them. Also, a good deal of the animals that survive past infancy have abnormalities and health problems that include respiratory distress, brain lesions, metabolic problems, skeletal malfunctions, and
Reproductive cloning could also be abused by people who want to create genetically superior children. Using reproductive cloning you could clone the world’s greatest athletes and geniuses. As crazy as it sounds, this would open up the door to future possibilities of a world where genetic discrimination is the norm like in the movie GATTACA.
What was once thought to be the content of fiction novels and comic books is now being fully explored and realized in the cutting edge world of modern science. Scientists now possess the necessary capabilities and technology to make the process of human cloning a reality. While this is a controversial and rather sensitive topic, cloning is an innovative practice that has the potential to vastly improve the lives of unlimited amounts of people. Although cloning may prove to be a useful remedy for many of today’s issues, there are those in the scientific and medical fields who remain vehemently opposed to its practice. It is for this reason that lawmakers, scientists, and doctors around the world are currently locked in a fierce standoff
In Leon Kass’s “The Wisdom of Repugnance” critical article he addresses the dangers of cloning and why we should not pursue the idea of it. Kass starts out by stating that Joshua Lederberg, one of the major contributors to the idea of cloning, has an amoral view to “this morally weighty subject”( Kass 17). We have been softened up on the idea of cloning because of how cloning has made its way into our daily lives; although it may be subtle, it can easily slip into our minds and soften us up to see cloning is moral when it is amoral. We have taken cloning so far that it is even integrated into our families by our embryos; people will be able to change the identity of their children, leading us to re-create ourselves. Which is immoral
On the other hand, there are also some scientists that think that the cloning of humans should not be allowed. Michele Orecklin reports in Time magazine that Dr. Leon Kass an eminent University of Chicago Bioethicist makes his views against human cloning well known. Kass this past year was picked by President Bush to head an advisory panel on stem cell research. Kass had recently been changing from a political thinker to a political player because of his opposition to human cloning and he believes that cloning robs us of our humanity. On June 20, 2001 Dr. Kass gave testimony on his opinions of human cloning in front of the Committee on Energy and Commerce. Kass started his testimony by saying that he supported the Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2001 for two reasons. The first reason given by Kass was that human cloning was unethical, both in itself as well as to what it could lead to. His second reason was that he believes that this bill is the only "reasonable" chance at preventing human cloning from happening. Here is an excerpt from his testimony.
There are many arguments against cloning. Leon R. Kass bases his argument on repugnance in his article The Wisdom of Repugnance. He is a well-known physician, educator and scientist. Kass perceives cloning as offensive, grotesque revolting, repulsive and wrong. To establish his argument he states, “Most people recoil from the prospect of mass production or human being, with large clones of look-alikes, compromised in their individuality.”1 His rationale is cloning is unnatural, because it is asexual and requires only one parent. Kass believes that cloning turns natural procreation into a manufactured process, which is not natural or moral. In his essay he also points out that cloning will also change the way we see ourselves through our
Today’s technology develops so quickly that many impossible things become true; the example is cloning technology. Cloning is a process used to create an exact copy of a mammal by using the complete genetic material of a regular body cell. Different from the common propagate, cloning needs only one cell and without sex. Cloning, as of recent years, has become a very controversial issue in society but cloning can have several positive effects for the well being of society. Many people in society believe that scientists should develop a clone human but many people and especially the government are against human cloning. Hundreds of
(McConnell, T. c2014) If parents use cloning as an instrument of achieving their desired outcome of a genetic child and embryos are considered as a form of human life at fertilisation before being destroyed in medicine, then the moral way to handle this is to ban all forms of genetic cloning. In all cases of cloning, the embryo life form is a tool for a human to get what they
While some believe cloning to be acceptable others feel equally strongly that human cloning is completely wrong. With the state of the science as it is at the moment it would involve hundreds of damaged pregnancies to achieve one single live cloned baby. What is more, all the evidence suggests that clones are unhealthy and often have a number of built-in genetic defects, which lead to premature ageing and death. It would be completely wrong to bring a child into the world knowing that it was extremely likely to be affected by problems like these. The dignity of human life and the genetic uniqueness we all have would be attacked if cloning became commonplace. People might be
The first problem that human cloning encounter is it is one of unethical processes because it involves the alteration of the human genetic and human may be harmed, either during experimentation or by expectations after birth. “Cloning, like all science, must be used responsibly. Cloning human is not desirable. But cloning sheep has its uses.”, as quoted by Mary Seller, a member of the Church of England’s Board of Social Responsibility (Amy Logston, 1999). Meaning behind this word are showing us that cloning have both advantages and disadvantages. The concept of cloning is hurting many human sentiments and human believes. “Given the high rates of morbidity and mortality in the cloning of other mammals, we believe that cloning-to-produce-children would be extremely unsafe, and that attempts to produce a cloned child would be highly unethical”, as quoted by the President’s Council on Bioethics. Since human cloning deals with human life, it said to be unethical if people are willing to killed embryo or infant to produce a cloned human and advancing on it. The probability of this process is successful is also small because the technology that being used in this process is still new and risky.
If a random individual were asked twenty years ago if he/she believed that science could clone an animal, most would have given a weird look and responded, “Are you kidding me?” However, that once crazy idea has now become a reality, and with this reality, has come debate after debate about the ethics and morality of cloning. Yet technology has not stopped with just the cloning of animals, but now many scientists are contemplating and are trying to find successful ways to clone human individuals. This idea of human cloning has fueled debate not just in the United States, but also with countries all over the world. I believe that it is not morally and ethically right
Imagine a future where humans are manufactured, a future where humans are created by science, a future where humans are the new lab specimen. Human cloning is like opening Pandora's Box, unleashing a torrent of potential evils but at the same time bringing a small seed of hope. No matter how many potential medical and scientific benefits could be made possible by human cloning, it is unethical to clone humans.
Many people have asked, "Why would anyone want to clone a human being?" There are at least two good reasons: to allow families to conceive twins of exceptional individuals, and to allow childless couples to reproduce. In a free society we must also ask, "Are the negative consequences sufficiently compelling that we must prohibit consenting adults from doing this?" We will see that in general they are not. Where specific abuses are anticipated, these can be avoided by targeted laws and regulations, which I will suggest below.
Many ethical and moral dilemmas arise when discussing human cloning, and one can have many positions for and against each. To understand the issues surrounding human cloning, one must have a basic
As the advancement of time, the concept of human cloning can become a reality as with the breakthrough of biotechnology. Human cloning can be defined in terms of formation of genetically same imprint of an individual. The child who produced from this process is a new category of human being that is a clone of a person who cloned himself. Many people think that it is not right to cloned human beings. People argued that it is wrong to create identical human being, and this argument is dismissed by stating various other arguments in the favor of human cloning such as there is nothing wrong if monozygotic twins exist, and clone is not the identical copy of the original human being even in those situations where clone is exact genetic copy because those clones are developed in a completely different environment. In this paper, I will discuss the life in shadow argument as well as arguments opponent to it. In addition, I will discuss the ethical considerations of human reproductive cloning regarding this