The Moral Implications of Cloning

I am writing to address the problem I have with cloning. Therapeutic and Reproductive cloning is a waste of money and time. Why would you pay fifty thousand american dollars to clone something or someone that won’t be an exact copy? Every person or animal in the world is made for a reason, so why make a clone if you’re one of a kind.

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

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.

Cloning is “the creation of exact copies of a gene, cell, or entire organism” (“Cloning”). Many objects can be cloned such as plants and cells. The topic of cloning becomes controversial when the focus is toward humans. It is evident that cloning of other species and organisms is possible. Because of this, the thought of human cloning has arisen in the science community within the previous few centuries. According to a poll produced by Time Magazine, ninety-three percent of American’s are opposed to human cloning (“Human Cloning”). This proves that the advancement of this topic has developed far beyond our wisdom. If nearly one hundred percent of the population disagrees with even the idea of this experiment, it is evident that they are unaware of the ways in which this technology has advanced. Furthermore, this unpredictable outcome of cloning will be irreversible. “Whatever effects cloning might have, cloning would be like opening Pandora’s Box, because there would be no way to turn back once the technology was developed and in use” (“Human Cloning”). As has been noted, the science of human cloning is not yet understood therefore it has advanced far too quickly for society to

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.

As mentioned earlier, cloning is the copying of an organism that results in identical offspring (“Cloning”). Scientists have tried cloning many times on frogs and other organisms (“Cloning”), but when the first mammal to be cloned was successful in 1997, scientists jumped into pools of thoughts to clone humans. The first mammal to be cloned was a sheep named Dolly. The process of cloning Dolly was called Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer. The nucleus of a somatic stem cell is taken out of the eggs of the

This sci-fi plot line may be familiar, but it has nothing to do with the actual, controversial cloning process, one that may be used by today’s scientists to create cloned human embryos in the not-so-distant future.

A possible application for cloning could be to produce identical organs and tissues to transplant into needy recipients as today, receiving a new organ is extremely difficult and there is always the chance that the body will reject it (Hilmert, 2002). Furthermore, using these embryonic stem cells can also provide a cure for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease providing society with an immense benefit (Evan, 2002).

Cloning has become a major issue in our modern world, from moral, ethical, and religious concerns, to the problem of financial and government support. Human cloning is one of the most controversial topics, and because of this, many of the new important discoveries and beneficial technologies have been overlooked and ignored. Reproductive cloning technology may offer many new possibilities, including hope for endangered species, resources for human organ transplants, and answers to questions concerning cancer, inherited diseases, and aging. The research that led up to the ability to clone mammals started more than a century ago. From frogs to mice to sheep to humans, reproductive cloning promises many possibilities.

Mammalian cloning, through this nuclear transfer process, has resulted in the birth of hundreds of organisms to date. However, significantly more nuclear transfer generated embryos fail during pregnancy than would fail in sexual reproduction, and a substantial majority of cloned animals who have survived to birth have had some significant birth

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

Today’s technology has developed so quickly that many impossible things have become true; the example is cloning technology. Cloning is a process used to create an exact copy of an animal by using the complete genetic material of regular body cell. Nowadays, “many animals clones don’t spring forth fully formed, and they aren’t even grown in test tubes,” (Rudenko, 2003), Ph.D., a molecular biologist and senior adviser for biotechnology in the CVM. “They are just born just like any other animal.” In other words, clones are identical copies of animals,

    "See you in two years with your cloned child," says the doctor to his patient. Such a statement sounds so bizarre and futuristic, but scientists believe cloning "is no longer the realm of science fiction" (Virginia, Sirs). Its "just a matter of time before the first cloned [humans]" (Virginia, Sirs). Although this practice does not seem dangerous, cloning should be banned because it takes away the individual importance of human beings, is too risky, and also morally wrong.

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.

As the procedure stands now, the cloning of humans is immoral. The procedure used has a low success rate and disfiguration and death is not uncommon, but that is because it has only been developed to be used on animals, with which these types of losse s are far more acceptable. All reasonable scientists agree that the process should not even be attempted until the process is refined to meet acceptable success rates and that those higher success rates will be feasible in the near future.