Concerning Cloning Humans
The ethics of human cloning has become a great issue in the past few years. The advocates for both sides of the issue have many reasons to clone or not to clone. This is an attempt to explore the pros and cons of human cloning and to provide enough information of both sides of the arguments in order for the reader to make their own informed decision on whether human cloning is ethical or not. Cloning will first be defined. Then a brief explanation of why questions concerning cloning humans have arisen will be presented. Some things cannot be known for sure unless it is tested, i.e., human cloning is allowed. Followed by that, a discussion of the facts and opinions that support cloning will be presented and then the same against cloning. Please remember that not all of this has proven true nor is able to be proven yet, but has simply been argued as a scientific hypothesis. Finally, my own personal opinion will be stated.
Defining Human Cloning
When speaking of human cloning, what is meant? Different groups and organizations define it differently. To use a specific definition, the American Medical Association (AMA) defined cloning as "the production of genetically identical organisms via somatic cell nuclear transfer. 'Somatic cell nuclear transfer' refers to the process which the nucleus of a somatic cell of an existing organism is transferred into an oocyte from which the nucleus has been removed" (Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs 1). In other words, cloning is the method of produce a baby that has the same genes as its parent. You take an egg and remove its nucleus, which contains the DNA/genes. Then you take the DNA from an adult cell and insert it into the egg, either by fusing the adult cell with the enucleated egg, or by a sophisticated nuclear transfer. You then stimulate the reconstructed egg electrically or chemically and try to make it start to divide and become an embryo. You then use the same process to implant the egg into a surrogate mother that you would use with artificial insemination. (Eibert)
However, many groups have used a broader definition of cloning. They include the production of tissues and organs through growing cells or tissues in cultures along with the actual producing of embryos to be born. This is done with the use of stem cells. When an egg is fertilized and begins to divide, the cells are all alike. As the cells divide, certain cells differentiate and become the stem cells that produce certain tissue and then organs. Research in this very active. There is still much for scientists to learn about cell differentiation and how it works. To a clone an organ, a stem cell must be produced and then used to a clone that specific organ. For the sake of this paper, both definitions will be used in order to cover all opinions.
One must understand that cloning does not produce an exact copy of the person being cloned. What cloning does, is that it copies the DNA/genes of the person and creates a duplicate genetically. The person will not be a Xerox copy. He or she will grow up in a different environment than the clone, with different experiences and different opportunities. Genetics does not wholly define a person and the personality.
How It All Started
In February 1997, when embryologist Ian Wilmut and his colleagues at Roslin Institute in Scotland were able to clone a lamb, named Dolly, the world was introduced to a new possibility and will never be the same again (Nash). Before this, cloning was thought to be impossible, but now there is living proof that the technology and knowledge to clone animals exist. Questions began to arise within governments and scientific organizations and they began to respond. Are humans next? Is it possible to use this procedure to clone humans also? Would anyone actually try? What can we learn if we clone humans? How will this affect the world? These are only a few of the questions that have surfaced and need answered. A whole new concept in ethics was created when the birth of Dolly was announced.
There are a great number of possible medical benefits and disadvantages to cloning and its technology. They include the following:
Potential Medical Benefits
The possibility that through cloning technology we will learn to renew activity of damaged cells by growing new cells and replacing them.
The capability to create humans with identical genetic makeup to act as organ donors for each other, i.e., kidney and bone marrow transplants.
The benefit of studying cell differentiation at the same time that cloning is studied and developed.
Sterile couples will be able to have offspring will have either the mother's or father's genetic pattern.
Potential Harms and Disadvantages
The possibility of compromising individualities.
Loss of genetic variation.
A "black market" of fetuses may arise from desirable donors that will want to be able to clone themselves, i.e., movie stars, athletes, and others.
Technology is not well developed. It has a low fertility rate. In cloning Dolly, 277 eggs were used, 30 started to divide, nine induced pregnancy, and only one survived to term (Nash).
Clones may be treated as second-class citizens.
Unknown psychosocial harms with impacts on the family and society.
The Governments Make a Move
The governments went to work shortly after the cloning of Dolly. They wanted to take control and make laws before anything drastic could ever happen. Several ethics committees were asked to decide whether scientists should be allowed to try to clone humans. Many of the committees found the data displayed above. In the United States, the National Bioethics Advisory Commission recommended a five-year moratorium on cloning a child through somatic cell nuclear transfer (Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs 1). In the state of Michigan, Governor Engler signed a law last year making human cloning illegal with harsh penalties if it is attempted ("Governor Engler..."). In the United Kingdom, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) and the Human Genetics Advisory Commission (HGEC) have approved human cloning for therapeutic purposes, but not to clone children ("HFEA supports Human Cloning in U.K."). Many organizations have come out and stated their opinions also. Amongst all this ethical defining, many people are being ignored by the governments. People are speaking out about what they want done.
Let Us Clone
After a couple has had their first child, to their disappointment they become infertile and cannot have more children. Cloning would enable such a couple to have a second child, perhaps a younger twin to the child they already have. This example has a very good argument. Many couples have difficulties having children, and sometimes it is impossible for couples to have children because they are infertile. Cloning would allow these couples to have children. Also, occasionally a woman is born without a uterus or has other complications and cannot produce eggs, then with the help of a surrogate mother, she can have a child of her own using her own DNA or her husband's.
This and the example at the beginning are both arguments that some have made in promoting cloning. It is hard to tell someone that they cannot use cloning to have children when no other possible ways to produce offspring are available. This is one reason why it is difficult to decide if cloning is ethical or not. The following are some of the reasons why cloning should be allowed.
As just discussed, cloning can be used to help benefit those that are sterile and cannot have children through the normal, natural way. It is the desire of most couples to have children and when it is impossible to bare children of your own, some are willing to do anything to have a child. Cloning will allow them to have a child or many children that have the genetic pattern of one of the parents.
Through cloning, research can progress. It is hard to say what we can learn from cloning if cloning is not allowed. We possibly can learn more about cell differentiation. We can learn enough to produce human organs without having to produce human beings. We may develop technology to allow easier genetic testing and fixing problems such as spinal cord injuries, cancer, Tay-Sachs disease, and many more.
Cloning organs for organ transplants is one of the major practical reasons that cloning should be allowed. There is always a high demand for organs. Some argue for the cloning of humans to create spare body parts. Others talk of just wanting to clone an organ to replace a defective organ.
Rejuvenation is also a key argument for advocates of cloning. Human cloning may one day reverse heart attacks. Some scientists believe that by injecting cloned healthy heart cells into damaged heart tissue will lead to healing of the heart (Human Cloning Foundation). By combining the technology for cloning and the technology for growing human stem cells, conditions like Alzheimer=s disease, Parkinson=s disease, and degenerative joint disease may be curable. The possibilities are endless and may be left undiscovered if human cloning is banned.
Thou Shalt Not Clone
One of the main goals of the government is to protect human life. Some people want the government to regulate cloning and not allow it. Michigan=s government believes this and became the first government to place a ban on cloning. As mentioned before, the governor signed laws that prohibit engaging or attempting to engage in human cloning. A Michigan state senator, Mr. Bennett said, "This legislation boils down to one thing: Prohibiting the creation of human life for scientific research. Human cloning is wrong; it will be five years from now; and wrong 100 years from now!" ("Governor Engler...") Producing clones for research or to use their parts is unethical. It would be against the code of ethics of a doctor to harm a clone (i.e., use it for an organ transplant). The clone would be a human being and deserve all the rights and privileges that a non-cloned human has. A clone should not be a second-class citizen. It is speculated that they would be considered as such.
The American Medical Association holds four points of reason why cloning should not take place. They are: 1) there are unknown physical harms introduced by cloning, 2) unknown psychosocial harms introduced by cloning, including violations of autonomy and privacy, 3) impacts on familial and societal relations, and 4) potential effects on the human gene pool (Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs 4-6). We just simply do not know the harms that will come from cloning.
Cloning would lead to the loss of individuality because one=s genetic predispositions and conditions would be known. If raised by a clone-parent or as a sibling to the cloned, one may have great expectations to live up to. However, the human clones could differ greatly in personality and even grow up with different conditions than the cloned. Even monozygotic twins differ. This could be a great stress to the clone and possibly even the loss of ability to chose for itself (Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs 5).
The long term genetic effects of cloning may cause more problems than can be imagined. The question of what can go wrong in cloning needs to be discussed. In an evolutionary standpoint, cloning is not good. Evolution relies on a continual mixing and matching of genes to keep the gene pool alive (McCormack). With cloning, the natural process of selection of genes would be bypassed and evolution would be impaired. The Council of Ethical and Judicial Affairs for the AMA stated the following concerning possible problems with mutations and clones:
Since the somatic cell from which clones originate likely will have acquired mutations, serial cloning would compound the accumulation that occurs in somatic cells. Although these mutations might not be apparent at the time of cloning, genetics problems could become exacerbated in future generations. (Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs 6)
We can see that cloning can possibly change the gene pool from how we now know it. Most likely, it would not be a good change.
Technology as we presently know it will not effectively support the cloning of humans. As mentioned before, the success rate was quite low when cloning Dolly. Only one of the 277 tries succeeded, see chart 1. The same problems of the difficulty of having the fertilized egg implant parallels with that in in vitro fertilization. Technology has not yet been able to provide an answer to this problem.
The fear that clones will be treated as second-class citizens is also present. If a clone is created to act as bone marrow or kidney donor, the question arises if they would be treated like the first child? Would the parents even love this child the same? If not, this would lead to negative self-esteem and/or other physiological problems.
There is also the fear that some would want to clone people to create large armies of the same soldier or even produce large amounts of workers. This would also lead to the creation of a second and lower class for clones.
From a Latter-day Saint point of view, the Proclamation on the Family clearly does not agree with cloning. The Proclamation states: "We . . . declare that God has commanded that the sacred powers of procreation are to be employed only between man and woman, lawfully wedded as husband and wife. We declare the means by which mortal life is created to be divinely appointed. We affirm the sanctity of life and of its importance in God's plan." (Italics added) In other words, the power to create humans is only to be used in a marriage between husband and wife. Cloning only involves one parent, therefore it is not following God's plan in which a man's sperm and a woman's egg are needed to create life.
My Personal Recommendation
As a student studying biology, I have tried to approach both sides and approach them with an unbiased opinion. I personally think that the world of genetics is fascinating, but after learning of what is now possible through technology, I changed my mind about pursuing a career in the field. I see cloning as a wonderful advancement in technology and knowledge. I do not think it should be used to reproduce humans though. I do not believe that we should try to develop other ways beside the natural way to bring life into this world. I strongly believe that God created us and that we are subjected to His laws and must obey. The laws of God that have the worst punishment deal with bringing life into the world and taking life out of the world. I believe that cloning people would fall under these laws also.
Cloning tissues and organs falls under a different category that cloning human beings. I think it would be advantageous to science and medicine to clone tissues and organs. However, the research in this involves fetal tissue which is a completely different ethical discussion. I do not know enough about the procedure be against it. So, with my present understanding I would allow cloning for tissues and organs.
Conclusion
Cloning can revolutionize the world and the way we live or it may be so minimal that it would not affect us at all if it is allowed. The first human to be cloned was reported in Korea by Dr. Kim Seung Bo and Dr. Lee Bo-Yeon. The clone was born and then killed just days into life (Alton). Before we knew it, the first clone was created and then destroyed. Is this the world you want to live in? Each person individually must decide for himself or herself if they believe that cloning should be allowed or if the governments should intervene with it.
Works Cited
Alton, David. Send on the Clones. no date.
In arguing against cloning, the central debate is derived from the fact that this unnatural process is simply unethical. The alleged
successful clones often have problems with their body and are subject to a short lifespan ridden with health problems. This hurts the person or animal cloned rather than to help them, making cloning an immoral
Cloning is a recent innovative technique the National Institute of Health defines as a process employed to produce genetically identical copies of a biological entity. Depending on the purpose for the clone, human health or even human life can be improved or designed respectively. “Somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) is the most common cloning technique. SCNT involves putting the nucleus of a body cell into an egg from which the nucleus has been removed."^1 From this technique, an embryonic cell is activated to produce an animal that is genetically identical to the donor. Today, human cloning still remains as a vision, but because of the success of Dolly, the lamb, researchers are becoming more confident in the ability to produce a genuine
In conclusion, it is clear to see that cloning is not the taboo it has been made out to be. It is a new boundary that humanity has never encountered before and so it is understandable that people have qualms about ‘playing God’ by shaping a life. Although some might argue that it is immoral to clone human beings, the truth is that it is unethical not to. Given that such technology has the potential to save millions upon millions of lives, not tapping into that industry would have dire consequences on the future. In this case, the ends more certainly justify the means.
First and foremost, it is important to discuss what human cloning is. It is the conception of in vitro embryos that produces “individuals that are exact genetic copies of the donor from whom the DNA was obtained” (Munson 366). In Laymen’s terms, cells are inserted from the donor host into an unfertilized egg from another host (meaning it is asexual) and the new egg is transferred into the surrogate mother where it will foster into an embryo, if effective.
Cloning is, and always has been an extremely contentious topic. To some, the ethical complications surrounding it, are far more promiscuous than what scientists and medical experts currently acknowledge. Cloning is a general term that refers to the process in which an organism, or discrete cells and genes, undergo genetic duplication, in order to produce an identical copy of the original biological matter. There are two main types of artificial cloning; reproductive and therapeutic, both of which present their respective benefits and constraints. This essay aims to discuss the various differences between the two processes, as well as the ethical issues associated with it.
In order to strongly argue against cloning, there must be an understanding of its process and what exactly it is. Simply stated, a clone is a duplicate just like a photocopy. A good example of such “copies” that occur are identical twins, which are duplicates of each other. “The first step of DNA cloning is to isolate a complete gene and is to chromosomal sequences and then to gradually begin flaking the chromosomal sequences of a single DAN molecule. Then the DNA clone can be electronically labeled and used as a probe to isolate the chromosomal sequences from a collection of different types of genes, which should contain cloned sequences that would represent the whole gene. This action will produce new sets of cloned cells identical to the mother cell. The new set of cells are isolated and likewise the simplified process is repeated all over again until the cells form a complete organ. In order to produce a complete organism the DNA must be altered in a variety of way to come out with the finished product to be the complete organism.” In simple terms, a cell is taken from a donor woman. Then an unfertilized egg is taken from a second woman. The DNA from the cell is removed and transferred to the egg. The egg is then implanted into a surrogate mother. The resulting baby is genetically identical to the original donor.
...cloning can be divided into two broad category: potential safety risk and moral problems, and these concerns overweigh its achievement.
Last of all, Cloning is not ethical, many religious groups look down upon cloning and think it’s not proper because they think it’s like playing God. Many scientists were mainly thinking about cloning animals and, most likely, humans in the future to harvest their organs and then kill them. “Who would actually like to be harvested and killed for their organs?” “Human cloning exploits human beings for our own self-gratification (Dodson, 2003).” A person paying enough money could get a corrupt scientist to clone anybody they wanted, like movie stars, music stars, athletes, etc (Andrea Castro 2005),” whether it be our desire for new medical treatments or our desire to have children on our own genetic terms (Dodson, 2003).
In the article that I chose there are two opposing viewpoints on the issue of “Should Human Cloning Ever Be Permitted?” John A. Robertson is an attorney who argues that there are many potential benefits of cloning and that a ban on privately funded cloning research is unjustified and that this type of research should only be regulated. On the flip side of this issue Attorney and medical ethicist George J. Annas argues that cloning devalues people by depriving them of their uniqueness and that a ban should be implemented upon it. Both express valid points and I will critique the articles to better understand their points.
Seidel, Jr., George E. "Cloning." World Book Student. World Book, 2014. Web. 13 Feb. 2014. source 19
Human cloning is dangerous. It is estimated that between 95 and 98 percent of cloning experiments have failed (Genetics and Society). These downfalls to cloning are in the form of miscarriages and stillbirths (Genetics and Society). Cloned human beings also run the risk of having severe genetic abnormalities. Children cloned from adult DNA would, in a sense, already have “old” genes. These children’s main problem would be developing and growing old too quickly. This includes arthritis, appearance, and organ function. Since the chance of having a child with mental and physical problems is so much higher than that of a normally conceived child, cloning should be illegal.
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 produce and actual living breathing organism.
Recently, in February 2001, CNN conducted a poll that stated, 90% of American adults think that cloning humans is a bad idea (Robinson). Even though the majority of Americans are opposed to human cloning, there are many benefits that will come from the research. Advancements in the medical field and in the fertility process will arise from human cloning. These advancements make cloning very beneficial to the human society. One of the most beneficial aspects of cloning is the ability to duplicate organs.
It can also be used to develop ‘spare parts’ of the human body to be used for organ transplants. Before going into the advantages of human cloning, one should know what the process involves. Many of the people say that it is the creation of anothe... ... middle of paper ... ... ill him for spreading miss-conceptions.