The First Human Clone : Real Stories

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

I will outline the concept of human reproductive cloning, what the issues are and evaluate it under the Utilitarianism, Deontology and Virtue Theory.

The 21st century however forecasts an astonishing increase in innovation in another direction. While previously overshadowed by its larger cousins, physics and chemistry, it seems likely that the biological sciences will steal the limelight in the future. Mapping the genome, reversing the aging process, and finding a cure for terminal illnesses, all represent primary objectives for science. Unfortunately, the ethical questions posed by innovations in biomedicine are far greater than those posed by advances in the physical sciences. Reproductive cloning is one of these innovations, and one that arguably poses the greatest threat to the world as we know it. The universal truth, blindly accepted by man for millennia, held that a human could only be born through the sexual union of a male and a female, to be exact, of an egg and a sperm. By cloning, however, a human life can be created in the laboratory. This is done by taking human DNA and inserting it into an egg cell, sans genetic material. The resultant cell is identical to the original, and can then be inserted into a uterus, either a human or an animal one, and be grown to term, to produce a baby, while circumventing nature’s means of reproduction.

Human cloning is described as “the creation of a genetically identical copy of a human.” Although human cloning has no record of being successful, cloning was demonstrated to be possible when scientists Sir Ian Wilmut and the rest of their research team successfully cloned Dolly, a sheep (Wilmut 12). This demonstration opened up a new area of science ready to be explored. If animals can be cloned, can human beings be cloned too? If successful, scientists would be able to clone human copies and further advance modern medicine, such as using cells for regenerative medicine or harvesting organs for transplants. It is also possible that other fields of medicine and research can be furthered with this supply of human clones. Additionally, couples incapable of reproducing can pursue cloning to create an offspring with their DNA. However, human cloning has never been successful and comes with ethical concerns.The clone can suffer from abnormalities. There are also concerns regarding the treatment of embryos to gather stem cells and the treatment of clones as a person. By further investigating and analyzing this topic through the lens of Catholic moral tradition, I hope to make clear the pros and cons of the subject while also evaluating them with an ethical theory learned from this quarter in order to add to the discussion.

Reproductive cloning technology may provide a way for completely sterile individuals (those not capable of producing gametes) to reproduce a child with identical genetic make up as their own. It might be more reliable than current infertility treatments and in-vitro-fertilization (IVF). As explained by Smith:

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 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).

What are the benefits of human cloning? Even though genetically copying something has its negatives, there are upswings. For example, cloning can help infertile couples get children of their own. It also can help patients that are injured.

In “Jennifer and Rachel,” Lee M. Silver argues that reproductive cloning deems permissible to those who encourage it, as opposed to those who reject it and don’t want to run the risk of how they’ll look in the eyes of society. Jennifer, an independent career driven woman, believes that the best way to have a baby of her own at her age is by cloning. Silver’s description of the cloning procedure is done by retrieving cells from the willing adult; prepare the cells for merging to unfertilized eggs, and then the embryos that develop successfully will be introduced to the uterus of the willing adult. Jennifer partakes in the cloning procedure and it was successful. Nine months later on March 15, 2050, Rachel was born.

Cloning, an ethical issue that has been pressed across the globe, has become a substantial debate throughout a majority of nations. The incorporation of a new type of reproduction in the United States has a plentiful amount of benefits for certain animals and objects, but duplicates of humans is hard to comprehend for many people across America. Currently, cloning is an interesting topic that could become a new way to improve reproduction of animals and humans, prevent diseases, and increase the overall health of Americans.

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

The cloning of humans is now very close to reality, thanks to the historic scientific breakthrough of Dr. Ian Wilmut and his colleagues in the UK. This possibility is one of incredible potential benefit for all of us. Unfortunately the initial debate on this issue has been dominated by misleading, sensationalized accounts in the news media and negative emotional reactions derived from inaccurate science fiction. Much of the negativity about human cloning is based simply on the breathtaking novelty of the concept rather than on any real undesirable consequences. On balance, human cloning would have overwhelming advantages if regulated in a reasonable way. A comprehensive ban on human cloning by a misinformed public would be a sorry

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