The Pros And Cons Of Cloning

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Many people wonder how it would be like to meet someone just like themselves. Cloning is a copy of another organism that has the exact same DNA as the original. Most people have strong moral views that using an ordinary body cell from someone who has already lived to reconstructing a new person would be intrinsically wrong. It would be immoral to clone a human being now or any time soon. Cloning is a social sin because it damages society and violates the dignity of human life.
People began speculating whether it was possible to clone a human and whether that would be ethical after the cloning of Dolly, the first mammal to be cloned, in 1996. “Many opponents of a ban on human-cloning research point out that the technology used to clone Dolly is not nearly advanced enough to be used to clone humans” (“Cloning”). The successful cloning of Dolly announced to the world that it was possible to clone adult mammals. This raised the possibility that human cloning was still imminent. Cloning-to-produce-children could create serious problems of identity and individuality. “Cloned children may experience concerns about their distinctive identity not only because each will be genetically essentially identical to another human being, but also because they may resemble in appearance younger versions of the person who is their “father” or “mother”” (Engdahl 113). Our genetic makeup does not by itself determine our identities, but our genetic uniqueness is an important source of our sense of who we are and how we regard ourselves. It is a symbol of independece and individuality. Knowing and feeling that nobody has previously possessed our particular gift of natural characteristics, we go forward as genetically unique individuals into relatively in...

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...ss of “improving” our offspring, allowing us to create a second genesis. For the first time, each person will become a private god and make offspring in his or her own image.
Many people are worried that if scientists are allowed to rush forward with human-cloning research, they will develop technology that will become uncontrollable. The technology would take years to perfect and it might at first produce unpredictable results. Creating humans who are likely to develop deformities or killing malformed fetuses would be morally indefensible. Most people balk at the idea of engineering a race of people with supposedly superior physical and mental traits, since that would mean that some characteristics would have to be deemed unwanted and eliminated. Scientists should stop their further research on human-cloning for a better world with people with their own uniqueness.

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