Gyasto's Argument For The Legalization Of Human Cloning

In 1996 Dolly the sheep was born. However, she was not born like most other sheep. Instead, Dolly was cloned from the DNA of an adult sheep. Although Dolly seemed healthy, she died in 2003 after being diagnosed with a progressive lung disease. Dolly was the only sheep out of 277 attempts that made it to a live birth (The Roslin Institute). Would it be safe to take that chance when experimenting with cloning human babies? Some people seem to believe so, and agree with the idea of cloning to have a child. These people may have been parents who lost a child, or who want children of their own, but are unable to have them the conventional way. Depending on the circumstances, some people believe that cloning is ethically acceptable, while others do not. Tenzin Gyasto, better known as

The history of cloning dates back to 1835 with the first demonstration of artificial embryo cloning on a Sea Urchin (University of Utah Health Sciences). Today, there are two types of cloning: therapeutic and reproductive. Therapeutic cloning is defined as “the use of cloning technology for the reproduction of cells and the potential creation of semi-sentient beings purely for the purpose of harvesting body parts for transplantation” (The Dalai Lama 135). On the other hand, reproductive cloning is used solely to create an identical copy of someone or something. There could be many reasons that individuals choose to use reproductive cloning. For example, a couple who desperately want to have children but unfortunately cannot. Or in a more extreme case, as The Dalai Lama states “There could also be individuals who, out of desire to live beyond biological possibility may choose to clone themselves in the belief that they will continue to live in the new cloned being” (136). However, such individuals are not thinking about the effects that cloning could have on the world and future