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The significance of human cloning
Cloning moral and ethical issues
Do the advantages of cloning outweigh the disadvantages
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Recommended: The significance of human cloning
"To clone or not to clone?" that is the question troubling the mind's of many Americans and citizens all over the world. Imagine how life would become when millions of people start looking alike, acting alike, and thinking alike. There would be no diversity what so ever in today's society. Ban human cloning!, Jean Bethke Elshtain author of "To Clone or Not to Clone", displays a strong argument as to why human cloning should be banned. Cloning may bring advances in artificial organs, cosmetics, and age reduction; but nevertheless it takes away a human's individuality, uniqueness, and basically that person's right to live his own life.
Scientists have high hopes about cloning and what it might bring. They are talking about setting back the biological clocks and even giving immortality. Regenerating human parts is one of these ideas. People who once had a defective heart or liver can now be given a new one grown from their own cells. People who are paralyzed can be given another chance by being able to grow nerve cells. Bald men don't might not have to be blinded by their own reflection, they say. Hair follicles can be taken and grown to give a man the full head of hair and cover up the glare. One of the more disturbing reasons to clone is so that homosexuals may truly have their own children. Scientists can take 23 chromosomes from each male or each female and produce a baby that is actually theirs.
Cloning has many promises but isn't all it's said to be. It has been the talk of the scientific world since the sheep they call Dolly was introduced to the world as the first mammal ever to be cloned. Excitement grew into the desire to create human life. Scientists promised organ regeneration, advanced cosmetics, and the chanc...
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...Wasting 300 lives to artificially create only one is not a sacrifice our country should make.
In conclusion, there are many reasons why cloning shouldn't be done. First of all, diversity could be lost if we have clones. Secondly, It would turn children into manufactured objects designed to possess specific characteristics. Likewise, it could not be developed without putting the physical safety of the clones and the women who bear them at grave risk. Moreover, as Elshtain said: "technology is rapidly gutting our ethics", and it is our ethics. Finally use intuitive sense: It just feels wrong. People might recreate Hitler or some other evil. Whatever it takes, if we suffer in the short run we may prosper in the long run. The benefits to society, in my eyes, far outreach any moral, ethical or religious dilemma that we might face as a society concerning this issue.
Kevin T. Fitzgerald divided potential scenarios for using cloning technology into three categories: "Producing a clone in order to save the life of an individual who requires a transplant; making available another reproductive option for people who wish to have genetically related children, but face physical or chr...
...eir own image of a human and defying the Bible’s moral standards. Scientists are becoming more knowledgeable and taking the place of God and taking away the use of sexually reproducing. There is no guarantee that cloned humans will be normal, they may have diseases that are unknown to scientists now. Cloned humans may have half the life of a normal human, and there is no guarantee that the clone will have the same personality as the original person, for example, if Abraham Lincoln was cloned there is no way to know if he will become a serial killer, or be pro slavery.
Human cloning research has once been the subject of terrifying science-fiction films and novels, science experiments gone wrong, accomplished only by the evil scientists twirling their moustaches. However, ideas presented on page and screen are rarely accurate. The possibility of cloning an exact copy of another human with one already fully developed is almost impossible, but through meticulous research, scientists have discovered the numerous benefits of cloning humans, either with individual cells or an embryo.
...that is genetically identical to another person who has previously existed or who still exists. This may conflict with long-standing religious and societal values about human dignity, possibly infringing upon principles of individual freedom, identity and autonomy” ("Cloning Fact Sheet"). The high failure rates of cloning and the abnormalities after successful procedures in human systems have caused most societies to wary away from cloning. To implement this health risks on humans would simply be immoral. Who knows maybe cloning one day would be more proficient than sexual reproduction and safer. Humans would choose this as a primary way to reproduce the most prominent humans but until more research is done, cloning is not prominent in today’s society. With cloning you never know where it could end up, I mean even Bill Gates wasn’t worth a billion dollars overnight.
In the past, cloning always seemed like a faraway scientific fantasy that could never really happen, but sometimes reality catches up to human ingenuity and people discover that a fictional science is all too real. Such was the fate of cloning when Dolly, a cloned sheep, came into existence during 1997, as Beth Baker explains (Baker 45). In addition to opening the eyes of millions of people, the breakthrough raised many questions about the morality of cloning humans. The greatest moral question is, when considering the pros against the cons, if human cloning is an ethical practice. There are two different types of cloning and both entail completely different processes and both are completely justifiable at the end of the day.
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
Automatically when people talk about human cloning that tend to be negative. Most reaction is people shouldn't play god or interfere with nature. Of course there are negative consequences that could come from cloning. On the other hand there is so many positive things that could save more lives than it would cost. Yes Cloning involves risky techniques that could result in premature babies and some deaths. That is why public policy needs to be changed on cloning. The medical possibilities are endless if federal money is given to research and develop cloning techniques.
Many people say that everyone in the world has a twin. Today, science and technology has the ability to make this myth reality through the process of cloning. I am strongly against cloning for many reasons. People should not utilize cloning because it would destroy individuality and uniqueness, cause overpopulation, animal cruelty, it is against morals and ethics, and it violates many religious beliefs.
In conclusion, the thesis of this paper is supported by three contentions. First, if successful, cloning can have a lot of positive technological advancements that would help humanity. Second, Dolly, the first cloned mammal, inspired many scientists to speculate a new era in cloning technology and raise hopes for future probability in which human cloning was possible. Finally, at the center of the controversy, surges the closest thing to a clone that lives a healthy and regular life, identical twins. The promise of cloning at any level can revolutionize the world, and change it for the better, but are we are not ready for human trials. The failure rate is overwhelming; we should master cloning animals with close to 100% success rate before starting human cloning trials.
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).
John A. Robertson’s article “Human Cloning and the Challenge of Regulation” raises three important reasons on why there shouldn’t be a ban on Human Cloning but that it should be regulated. Couples who are infertile might choose to clone one of the partners instead of using sperm, eggs, or embryo’s from anonymous donors. In conventional in vitro fertilization, doctors attempt to start with many ova, fertilize each with sperm and implant all of them in the woman's womb in the hope that one will result in pregnancy. (Robertson) But some women can only supply a single egg. Through the use of embryo cloning, that egg might be divisible into, say 8 zygotes for implanting. The chance of those women becoming pregnant would be much greater. (Kassirer) Secondly, it would benefit a couple at high risk of having offspring with a genetic disease choose weather to risk the birth of an affected child. (Robertson) Parents who are known to be at risk of passing a genetic defect to a child could make use of cloning. A fertilized ovum could be cloned, and the duplicate tested for the disease or disorder. If the clone were free of genetic defects, then the other clone would be as well. Then this could be implanted in the woman and allowed to mature to term. (Heyd) Thirdly, it would be used to obtain tissue or organs...
In recent years our world has undergone many changes and advancements, cloning is a primary example of this new modernism. On July 5th, 1995, Dolly, the first cloned animal, was created. She was cloned from a six-year-old sheep, making her cells genetically six years old at her creation. However, scientists were amazed to see Dolly live for another six years, until she died early 2005 from a common lung disease found in sheep. This discovery sparked a curiosity for cloning all over the world, however, mankind must answer a question, should cloning be allowed? To answer this question some issues need to be explored. Is cloning morally correct, is it a reliable way to produce life, and should human experimentation be allowed?
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...
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.
The Benefits of Human Cloning In recent years, many new breakthroughs in the areas of science and technology have been discovered. A lot of these discoveries have been beneficial to the scientific community and to the people of the world. One of the newest breakthroughs is the ability to clone. Ever since Ian Wilmut and his co-workers completed the successful cloning of an adult sheep named Dolly, there has been an ongoing debate on whether it is right or wrong to continue the research of cloning (Burley).