The Benefits of Therapeutic Cloning Will the use of therapeutic cloning aid humanity in the years to come? It is a hotly debated topic, the center of its controversy concerning morals. Some of its critics believe cloning to be ethically unacceptable; others believe it is defective and its failures outweigh its successes (Brown, 2009, p. 75). There are, however, many possible uses for therapeutic cloning. By using various methods of therapeutic cloning, doctors can make great medical achievements and save lives. Scientists can harvest stem cells through therapeutic cloning to cure diseases and even replace tissues and organs. The use and practice of therapeutic cloning can benefit society. Therapeutic cloning is the cloning of a specific cell …show more content…
The major controversy is surrounding the ethics of cloning because some of its methods involve the use and destruction of human embryos: “Many opponents disapprove of this research on the belief that the human embryo should be accorded full moral status” (Brown, 2009, p. 77). This belief is misleading, however. This is because “…scientists can now use adult skin cells to create a stem cell very similar to embryonic cells, but without the need for embryos… These induced cells also sidestep the ethical issues of embryonic stem cells, which are often created by destroying embryos” (Pollack, 2013, para. 12-13). So although therapeutic cloning is still controversial today, progress such as taking adult skin cells and converting them to embryonic stem cells, has been made to circumvent the problems surrounding cloning. Due to this progress, a whole new age of regenerative medicine could take place in the near …show more content…
It is a possible and likely treatment to several diseases, through the use of iPSCs. It can also heal injuries and even restore or create new organs by harnessing the untapped power of the stem cell. Finally, despite the major debate regarding cloning concerns how moral it is, due to the past use of embryonic stem cells, novel and more ethical methods have been made. Therapeutic cloning, through these ways and perhaps more, could change all of the ways patients are medically treated. Even more, in the near future therapeutic cloning could revolutionize the entire medical world. References Brown, A. (2009). Therapeutic Cloning: The Ethical Road to Regulation. Therapeutic Cloning: The Ethical Road to Regulation Part I: Arguments For and Against Regulations, 15:2, 75-79. April, 2017. Lim, H. A. (2013). Genes, Stem Cells, and Regenerative Medicine. April, 2017, www.asiabiotech.com Pollack, A. (2013, May 15). Cloning Is Used to Create Embryonic Stem Cells. Retrieved April, 2017, from
Therapeutic cloning is the process whereby parts of a human body are grown independently from a body from STEM cells collected from embryos for the purpose of using these parts to replace dysfunctional ones in living humans. Therapeutic Cloning is an important contemporary issue as the technology required to conduct Therapeutic Cloning is coming, with cloning having been successfully conducted on Dolly the sheep. This process is controversial as in the process of collecting STEM cells from an embryo, the embryo will be killed. Many groups, institutions and religions see this as completely unacceptable, as they see the embryo as a human life. Whereas other groups believe that this is acceptable as they do not believe that the embryo is a human life, as well as the fact that this process will greatly benefit a large number of people. In this essay I will compare the view of Christianity who are against Therapeutic Cloning with Utilitarianism who are in favour of Therapeutic Cloning.
Children grow up watching movies such as Star Wars as well as Gattaca that contain the idea of cloning which usually depicts that society is on the brink of war or something awful is in the midsts but, with todays technology the sci-fi nature of cloning is actually possible. The science of cloning obligates the scientific community to boil the subject down into the basic category of morality pertaining towards cloning both humans as well as animals. While therapeutic cloning does have its moral disagreements towards the use of using the stem cells of humans to medically benefit those with “incomplete” sets of DNA, the benefits of therapeutic cloning outweigh the disagreements indubitably due to the fact that it extends the quality of life for humans.
You really cant discuss the pros and cons of something without first knowing the topic. Personally I feel that many individual strong stances on this issue are based on myth rather than fact. Stem cells can be obtained from both the skin cells of an adult and also from the embryo after 4 to 5 days of incubation. Embryonic stem cells are where most of the
“Cloning represents a very clear, powerful, and immediate example in which we are in danger of turning procreation into manufacture.” (Kass) The concept of cloning continues to evoke debate, raising extensive ethical and moral controversy. As humans delve into the fields of science and technology, cloning, although once considered infeasible, could now become a reality. Although many see this advancement as the perfect solution to our modern dilemmas, from offering a potential cure for cancer, AIDS, and other irremediable diseases, its effects are easily forgotten. Cloning, especially when concerning humans, is not the direction we must pursue in enhancing our lives. It is impossible for us to predict its effects, it exhausts monetary funds, and it harshly abases humanity.
Long after Shelley wrote her classic masterpiece Frankenstein and Huxley wrote Brave New World, the ethical controversy of cloning conflicts with modern artificial intelligence research. The question that challenges the idea of negative or positive behavior in a replicated machine relies on its similarity to the source of the clone, whether it emulates human behavior or acts as a “superintelligence” with supernatural characteristics void of human error. Humanity will not know the absolute answers concerning behavioral outcome without creating a physical being, an idea portrayed in Shelley’s Frankenstein in which the creation of a monster emulates from his creator’s attempts to generate life. At the time of the novel’s publication, the idea of replicating a soul portrayed a nightmarish theme with little consideration for the potential scientific advancements to facilitate in reality. It lead the genetic idea of manmade intelligence and its ethics emerging from the relativity of space, time, and original life on the planet. The debate of the existing possibility of sentient machines continues to progress, but the consideration of ethical questions such as “Should we create these artificial people?” and “How does this enactment define the soul and mind?” warranted from primitive questions about machine learning within the last century. After the initial proof of possibility for sentient machines, the perfection of cloning will generate “good” behavior at its perfect state several generations from now. The perfect machine portrays the potential for sensible human behaviors including compassion, mentality, empathy, alertness, and love. Humanity of the twenty-first century possesses the knowledge to fantasize the idea of artificial ...
Those who favour stem cell research are optimistic about the continued developments in stem cell research will open doors to many breakthrough discoveries in biomedical science. The scientific and ethical questions arise as rapidly as the reaching of milestones in stem cell research. There are two main types of stem cells, namely embryonic stem cells and adult stem cells. Adult stem cells are undifferentiated cells in our body. But they have restricted-range of cells that they can further differentiate. On the contrary, embryonic stem cells have the ability to differentiate into nearly two hundred cell types in the human body, called pluripotency. The process of harvesting embryonic stem cells involves destruction of embryos (Mooney, 2009).
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.
It is normal to think cloning is something out of a science fiction orb. For many years, scientists have been telling the world that it’s impossible to clone humans, but they were all wrong. The technology of cloning humans is already here, as evidenced by Dolly the sheep, but it called forth questions about the role of God in society, the soul and even the quality of life a cloned individual would have (“16 important pros and cons”). Cloning technologies can prove helpful to researchers in genetics. With the history of cloning, one difference to help in mind, with dealing with cloning, is the reproductive cloning or therapeutic cloning.
...rshal, V.S., and Jones, J.M. 1998. Embryonic stem cell lines derived from human blastocysts. Science 282, 1145-1147.
Stem cells offer exciting promise for future therapies, but significant technical hurdles remain that will only be overcome through years of intensive research. Stem Cells have the incredible potential to develop into many different cell types in the body during early life and growth. Scientists primarily work with two kinds of stem cells from animals and humans. The embryonic stem cells and the non-embryonic stem cells. Stem cells are the cells from which all other cells originate. In a human embryo, a large portion of the embryo’s cells are stem cells. These stem cells can be used for cell-based therapies. Cell-Based therapies are treatments in which stem cells are induced to differentiate into the specific cell type required to repair damaged or destroyed cells or tissues. Stem cells are versatile and offer the possibility to treat a number of diseases including Alzheimer’s, stroke, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, etc. The problem is that for the process of embryonic stem cell research and embryo will be destroyed if used. This raises a moral issue and questions of whether stem cell research is unethical or not.
“The richest source of embryonic stem cells is tissue formed during the first five days after the egg has started to divide. At this stage of development, called the blastocyst, the embryo consists of a cluster of about 100 cells that can become any cell type. Stem cells are harvested from cloned embryos at this stage of development, resulting in the destruction of the embryo while it is still in the test tube. Researchers hope to use embryonic stem cells, which have the unique ability to generate virtually all types of cells in an organism, to grow healthy tissues in the laboratory that can be used to replace injured or diseased tissues. In addition, it may be possible to learn more about the molecular causes of disease by studying embryonic stem cell lines from cloned embryos derived from the cells of animals or humans with different diseases. Finally, differentiated tissues derived from embryonic stem cells are excellent tools to test new therapeutic drugs.” Although the exploration of these new cells can be beneficial for the future human generation, some critics this practice due to the fact that it is unethical and can turn into cancer cells. Stem cells have the capability to accumulate mutation, thus leaving a risk for diseases such as
John A. Robertson, “Human Cloning and the Challenge of Regulation,” The New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 339, no. 2 (July 9, 1998), pp. 119-122.
"Human Cloning and Human Dignity: An Ethical Inquiry." The President's Council on Bioethics Washington, D.C. N.p., July-Aug. 2002. Web.
Recent discoveries involving cloning have sparked ideas of cloning an entire human body (ProQuest Staff). Cloning is “the production of an organism with genetic material identical to that of another organism” (Seidel). Therapeutic cloning is used to repair the body when something isn’t working right, and it involves the production of new cells from a somatic cell (Aldridge). Reproductive cloning involves letting a created embryo develop without interference (Aldridge). Stem cells, if isolated, will continue to divide infinitely (Belval 6). Thoughts of cloning date back to the beginning of the twentieth century (ProQuest Staff). In 1938, a man decided that something more complex than a salamander should be cloned (ProQuest Staff). A sheep named Dolly was cloned from an udder cell in 1997, and this proved that human cloning may be possible (Aldridge). In 1998, two separate organizations decl...
One of the most beneficial aspects to cloning is the ability to duplicate organs. Many patients in hospitals are waiting for transplants and many of them are dying because they are not receiving a needed organ. To solve this problem, scientists have been using embryonic stem cells to produce organs or tissues to repair or replace damaged ones (Human Cloning). Skin for burn victims, brain cells for the brain damaged, hearts, lungs, livers, and kidneys can all be produced. By combining the technology of stem cell research and human cloning, it will be possible to produce the needed tissues and organs for patients in desperate need for a transplant (Human Cloning). The waiting list for transplants will become a lot shorter and a lot less people will have to suff...