The Controversy Of Cloning And Cloning

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Medical and scientific advancements are reasons for celebration as humans move forward to a new era where innovation furthers human understanding and allows new possibilities to form. However, one major scientific innovation seemed to do the exact opposite. As the news of a cloned mammal spread nationwide the opposition to cloning was almost instant, perhaps too instant. The hasty reaction of an overwhelming portion of the population indicates that an already existing ideology towards cloning had developed even before cloning was achieved. Scientists and philosophers agree that the previous use of generic engineering in literary works, even if unconsciously, caused the vast majority of individuals to develop a negative or unrealistic perspective regarding cloning. The apprehension towards cloning was only solidified by the negative and bias reaction of the media as they covered the news of Dolly the sheep as well as by new science fiction books and films that focused only on the potential negative risks of cloning.
Cloning might not have been a real possibility or an issue until the 1980s when the success of nuclear transfer in mammals was reported. However, as soon as cloning became a reality in 1996 with the birth of Dolly the first cloned animal derived from an adult cell (). It became increasingly clear that a large majority of the population was against it. Perhaps it was the lack of clear scientific information individuals received as the news of Dolly spread that lead the public into a period of fear and confusion, or perhaps it was the previous attempts of manipulating human genetic traits during the 1930s and 1940s when the Nazis tried to create a super-race know as eugenics (40), that many individuals feared the discove...

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...their dignity” (Marcus 408). For more than a century individuals have been warned trough literature and films about the moral wrongness of genetic engineering. Was it then mere coincidence the instant negative reaction of the public when cloning became a real possibility? Or is it possible that the novels, films, and News individuals use for entertainment purposes, actually had a greater psychological impact that resulted in the adopted formation of beliefs fed to humans by years of bias fictional and unrealistic scenarios that resemble reality. Can humans than separate reality from fiction as new helpful innovations surge such as therapeutic cloning were the harvesting of embryonic stem cells could be used to potentially cure diseases or be used to replace damaged organs. Simply because they have been lead to believe nothing good can come out of genetic engineering.

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