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We Should Not Fear Cloning Essay

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We Should Not Fear Cloning

With the successful cloning of animals, many people have reacted with frightening and usually uninformed ideas about what cloning is and what researchers hope to achieve through it. Many wish to ban all cloning without even looking at the positive things that cloning will be able to provide for us in the future and with continued research. Like any new technology, people are at first afraid, but this is no excuse to abandon research that could one day save millions of people through cloned organs or give an alternative and safe means of reproduction to sterile couples. This fear has only been furthered by the media sensationalizing the advancement and tossing "Brave New World" into every headline. The …show more content…

Cloning does indeed reduce the diversity of a herd of animals or a group of men, but there is no scientist that is suggesting that we find the "perfect" cow and clone him a million times over. This would allow the possibility of one disease killing an entire population, which is exactly why scientists wish to clone certain animals to augment the current gene pool. People are much the same. Science does not wish to clone the perfect person and effectively put all of our eggs in one basket. The goal is to aide humankind, not replace it with a "better model."

Society also has a fear that one day we may see clones as only pieces of meat that happen to have genetically identical organs than us. We fear that the clones of the future will be nothing but organ banks and mindless slaves. The answer to this fear is not outlawing any kind of cloning research, it is to educate ourselves in the ethics of cloning and simply not allow such behavior, either through social pressures or government regulation. If we pass legislation which completely bans cloning, the industry will simply go over seas or move to countries that have no laws on cloning or any other type of biomedical regulations. It will be in these places that slaves and organ factories will be produced.

When Ian Wilmut of the Roslin Institute cloned the first mammal from an adult cell, he pushed human understanding and technology forward many years. His

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