The Ethics Of Cloning

Imagine if you lived in a world where everyone was the same and had no physical differences. Everyone would have the exact same DNA. There would be no diversity within the population. If we continue to clone then this may be a possibility for the future. As of now there have been no cloned humans, but we are not too far away from being able to do so. Scientists have been cloning since as early as 1886, and have been cloning animals since 1996 with the birth of Dolly the sheep. Dolly the sheep was created by using reproductive cloning which is used to produce copies of whole animals (Cloning Fact Sheet NHGRI). Furthermore, there are two other types of cloning; therapeutic cloning and gene cloning. Therapeutic cloning is used to produce embryonic stem cells for medical research (Cloning Fact Sheet NHGRI). Gene cloning is used to produce copies of genes or segments of DNA (Cloning Fact Sheet NHGRI). Cloning should not be allowed because it is inhumane and unethical, results in more failure than it does results, and is unfeasible.

Unlike some movies, cloning in real life doesn’t produce a full grown exact replica of someone. A type of cloning that occurs naturally is when identical twins are born (“What Is Cloning?”). Somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) is a type of cloning that has to be done in a lab. In SCNT they take the nucleolus out of an egg cell, replace it with the nucleolus of a somatic cell (body cell with two complete sets of chromosomes), and make the egg cell divide into a blastocyst (“What Is Cloning?”).

that goes into creating a clone. First, scientist remove a somatic cell from an animal that they

Imagine a world where everyone looked like you and was related to you as a sibling, cousin, or any form of relation, wouldn’t that be freaky? Although cloning is not an important issue presently, it could potentially replace sexual reproduction as our method of producing children. Cloning is a dangerous possibility because it could lead to an over-emphasis on the importance of the genotype, no guaranteed live births, and present risks to both the cloned child and surrogate mother. It also violates the biological parent-child relationship and can cause the destruction of the normal structure of a family. The cloning of the deceased is another problem with cloning because it displays the inability of the parents to accept the child’s

Genetic cloning is one of the most controversial topics of all time. People, specifically scientists, are constantly searching for ways to improve the quality of human life. As a result, they began genetically engineering animals and are currently in search of a method to genetically engineer humans as well; which is called human cloning. There are many reasons why people should not go forward with this step since genetic cloning, consequently human cloning, does not respect nature nor does it ensure diversity and survival in natural ecosystems. In addition, genetic cloning is a cruel, harsh, and an unsafe experiment.

The topic of cloning has been a science fiction legend until Dolly, the first cloned mammal, was born in the late 1990s. Dolly’s cloning renewed the interest in the potential of human cloning as seen in science fiction. Cloning has been done since the 1950s, but every cloning experiment included problems. When cloning mice, researches can use thousands of eggs to fix errors, but human cloning cannot use the same knowledge learned from cloning cows. With human cloning there is an “…extremely high rate of death…” and chance of abnormalities that cause the ethical concern for cloning humans (Rettner).

The Canadian novelist Douglas Coupland once said, “Cloning is great. If God made the original, then making copies should be fine.” (Douglas Coupland Quotes) Cloning can refer to a number of processes, but is generally understood to mean creating an exact copy of a biological organism. For example, Scottish researchers created a lamb named Dolly from the udder cells of another sheep. (Cloning Fact Sheet) However, cloning can also refer to growing organs from existing cells. The issue for cloning is that creating a whole organism is expensive and goes against most religions. While this is true, cloning organs can offer people transplants in a cheap and legal manner.

Somatic nuclear transfer is a process in which an egg cell and a donor nucleus are

Cloning, or somatic cell nuclear transfer, involves complex maneuvering. A cell is first taken from the body of the person or animal to be cloned. It is then inserted into an egg cell whose nucleus has been removed, thus creating the equivalent to a zygote, or fertilized egg. After certain chemical adjustments, the cells of the zygote divide and multiply, as if it had been created from an egg and sperm. The zygote becomes a blastocyst, an early-stage, five-day-old embryo consisting of about 150 stem cells. If the blastocyst is placed into a surrogate mother’s uterus, it could possibly develop into a fully grown person, a replica of the original cell’s donor.

Science today is developing at warp speed. We have the capability to do many things, which include the cloning of actual humans! First you may ask what a clone is? A clone is a group of cells or organisms, which are genetically identical, and have all been produced from the same original cell. There are three main types of cloning, two of which aim to produce live cloned offspring and one, which simply aims to produce stem cells and then human organs. These three are: reproductive cloning, embryo cloning and therapeutic cloning. The goal of therapeutic cloning is to produce a healthy copy of a sick person's tissue or organ for transplant, and the goal of both reproductive cloning and embryo cloning is to

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.

In some ways, the never-ending scientific possibilities of our time have continued to exceed our expectations. Within the 20th century there has been new medical research on stem cell research, and we have successfully completed organ transplants—more recently face and skin transplants. Without progressions like this from science, many would not be alive today. But when does science take it too far? Is there a moral reason to continue…or a stopping point? If so, who determines where to draw the line? Science has already made it possible to clone an animal (Solter). Now, the idea of cloning humans is within our

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

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

Scientific experimentation has led us to many great discoveries such as: Chemotherapy, heart surgery, and bone marrow transplants. Recently scientists have discovered a new way to heal humans. This is known as cloning. Although they have yet to clone a human they have cloned sheep. Cloning has brought up a huge controversy among the American people. There are two sides to the story. Either you agree with cloning or you don’t. The only way to help make that decision is to look at the good and bad points of cloning.