The Ethics Of Human 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.

There is also doubt whether a human conceived by cloning would be treated the same as others. In a present school situation where bullying is an everyday occurrence, the fact of being a clone may be a factor in being bullied. Cloning also diminishes the clone's possibility of living a life that is in a full sense his or her life. People are likely to always compare the cloned person's performances in life with that of his or her alter ego (Kass 33). Thus human cloning is an invasion of privacy for the human conceived by cloning. We do not have a right to take away the originality of any human - even a clone.

The act of cloning a human being comes dangerously close to human beings acting as God. Do human beings have the right to tamper with nature in this way? This essay explores the various ethical issues related to the cloning debate, and seeks answers to this deep philosophical question at the heart of bioethics. As a student of genetic biology and future biologist, this question also has personal relevance. Our science is evolving at a rapid pace. As human cloning becomes increasingly possible, it is important that we analyze the ethics of cloning so that judicious public policy can be created. It is therefore my position that research into cloning should continue to fulfill the fundamental goals of scientific exploration and to explore the possibilities that cloning might have in terms of benefitting human society; on the other hand, there are certainly ethical limits to the practice of cloning. It is important to define those ethical limits, so that scientists understand the best ways to proceed.

The society’s sciences and technologies are advanced enough to be able to clone multiple times and even make it so the society dislikes the females who let a child develop inside of them. People in the society are born outside of a physical body and incubated without a physical mother. Cloning sciences in today’s world are not so advanced. Human cloning is mostly considered unethical and hasn’t advanced much beyond stem cell cloning. Even in animal cloning, the egg gets replanted back into a surrogate to incubate the egg and give birth.

The moral code for religious people stands at cloning being unacceptable. Various religious followers believe that science is “playing God”. This also corresponds with laws of the United States as well as other countries. Laws have outlawed cloning in general or have research monitored, “the issue was first addressed by California legislature, which banned reproductive cloning, or cloning to initiate a pregnancy, in 1997. Since then Arkansas, Connecticut, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Rhode Island, New Jersey, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Virginia have enacted measures to prohibit reproductive cloning,” (NCLS 1).

The issues behind cloning are many, but the most relevant are religion and ethics. In most religions, a higher power is the only one who can create a human or the process for making one. For example, Christian belief states that God is the only one who can create life.(Putatunda, “The Legal and Ethical Issues of Cloning That Make it Controversial.”) Any way that circumvents God’s plan of creation is considered unnatural. Cloning is also considered unethical, for two basic reasons. The first is that the process has a high failure rate and the second is the belief that a human controlling another’s genes is wrong. (Shapiro, “Ethical and Policy Issues of Human Cloning.”) While these are legitimate concerns, cloning does have many helpful applications. First, cloning can grow healthy cells and organs

clone is created, and this act of reproductive cloning is regarded with controversy; is it

When examining how human cloning can increase reproductive freedom, we must first look at what a clone is by definition. “Clone” in its verb tense means to make an identical copy of or in biochemistry, to replicate a fragment of DNA placed in an organism so that there is enough to analyze or use in protein production. This process can be performed for many different uses such as being used to grow in labs, embryotic treatments, genetic screening, anti-aging processes, and reproduction. It is important to note that “human cloning” of embryos will not produce an exact copy of an individual. Rather, it will replicate the same genotype to create a different individual human. ***As a reliable background, in this paper, I will be consistently referencing two main scientific articles. The first is from John Harris, a professor in the Institute of Medicine, Law, and Bioethics at the University of Manchester. His article “Goodbye Dolly” focuses on the nature and practicality of cloning. The other research article is by Alix Magney, a lecturer at the several universities who focuses on bioethics and medical health professionals, and highlights the investigations of the negative impacts of human cloning.

There are two types of cloning, one of them is reproductive cloning which is when a whole organism is cloned and therapeutic cloning is the cloning of cells, organs or tissues. Cloning is when two cells decide or are forced to duplicate into two cells to replicate each other. Cloning can be done deliberately or naturally; and it results in two copies having identical cells, DNA, genes, organs and organisms. Cloning is a common, ongoing, debatable topic among society today. Many people argue about how future scientific advances in cloning will affect society. Most often people dislike the idea of cloning because it goes against their ethical beliefs, or because they are in fear of it ending up in the wrong hands. But sometimes when the

A population of identical units, cells, or individuals that derive from the same ancestral line is know as Clone. Therapeutic cloning involves creating a cloned embryo for the sole purpose of producing embryonic stem cells with the same DNA as the donor cell. These stem cells can be used in experiments aimed at understanding disease and developing new treatments for disease. As I was going over the reading I found out that the matter of cloning from the different prospect of human has been the subject of considerable public attention and sharp moral debate. It also raises new questions about the manipulation of some human beings for the benefit of others, the freedom and value of biomedical inquiry, our obligation to heal the sick,

In the creation of technological advances that survives today, the dispute of cloning is ever existent as a debate of morals and human rights. People are asking if we have the right to clone humans and other animals. Cloning, the process of taking a cell from one organism, taking a donor womb cell from another organism of the same species, inserting the original cell in the donor cell, and placing the newly developed embryo inside a surrogate mother. This is an inhumane desecration of human rights and an obscene act against the natural balance of life. There are those who think that cloning is a brilliant idea and that it is tolerable to create life from an individual which already exists. Those in support of cloning have countless reasons for their opinion. They say that clones and cloning can be used for medical and research purposes, that clones are capable of populating our military. Another reason for cloning is to replace a deceased child or pet, or to enable infertile couples to have children. But these people in support of cloning seem to ignore one key factor that makes this act a violation of nature. All living human beings have feelings and thoughts, and that also includes clones. Cloning belittles the individualities each person and animals acquires, and many consider it an ethical injustice.

Clones are humans. This statement embodies the crux of the controversy regarding the ethics of human cloning. If clones are humans, then they should receive the same rights as humans who were born ‘naturally’. But how do you determine humanity? The film Never Let Me Go (2010), based on Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel of the same name, helps answer the question “Should we clone?” by establishing that humanity is more than the way one enters the world and by highlighting the unethical issues that may arise from cloning.

The concept of human cloning is highly controversial and has many gray areas. A lot of this controversy is caused by a misunderstanding about how human cloning actually works. The main cause of the lack of knowledge and understanding about the subject of cloning is the unrealistic depiction of cloning and Hollywood cliches that are presented by popular culture. A lot of myths arise from sci-fi movies such as The Sixth Day. In this specific movie there is the classic evil sociopath scientist consolidating power and using science immorally to aid his campaign, the human body chamber/artificial fish tank womb, the carbon copy clone that has the exact same looks and memories as the original person, and a whole

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.

Although the majority of arguments for human cloning come from the medical world, many secular ones arise in the debate as well. "Nancy Murphy of the Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena said she hoped that ethicists, `Would concentrate their efforts on saying what we should do with this [cloning], rather then saying it shouldn't be done, because people have rightly said it can't be prevented.'" (Garvey 6). Along the lines of Murphy's thought on the issue, Shapiro provides his insights: