Currently with technology advancing rapidly in every aspect of life, is it possible that humans can recreate themselves. This big ethical and moral question is on the minds of almost every person in the world. Should we as a human race make duplicates of ourselves? There are several things to look at and to consider when making decisions based on God like proportions. There are health risks from mutation of genes. An abnormal baby would be a nightmare come true.
The emotional risks could have a deep impact. For instance, the child grows up knowing her mother is her sister, her grandmother is her mother. Every time her mother looks at her, she is seeing herself growing up. There would be unbearable emotional pressures on a teenager trying to establish his or her own identity. What happens to a marriage when the father sees his wife’s clone grow up into the exact replica (by appearance) of the beautiful 18 year old he fell in love with 35 years ago? A sexual relationship would of course be with his wife’s twin, no incest involved technically.
There are always the risks of abuse of technology. With a God like technology like cloning, the risks could be less as risky as why someone would want a clone of someone else or of themselves. Reasons why people want human cloning may be rational or irrational. That is not the point. The fact is that a recent US survey conducted by CNN found that 6% of US citizens think human cloning could be quite a good idea. Just a few of the reasons people may want to clone could include bizarre ideas.
A person may want to recover someone who was lost as a twin or just a reminder. Someone else may have infertility issues and rather than use donated sperm and eggs, why not use a cell of one’s own self to give birth to yourself, one’s own twin? Other reasons would include: Eugenics – an attempt to improve the human race, Megalomania – a desire to reproduce one’s own qualities, Assisting medical research, Spare parts – using a cell from one’s own body to duplicate one’s self. Take tissue like bone marrow, and then offer baby for adoption. Then the biggest reason for human cloning may just simply be out of plain old curiosity.
Human cloning has always caught the public imagination. Humans now have the technology to take a few cells from a modern day Einstein, or a musical genius or a child prodigy and to create hundreds of cloned babies, which have exactly the same genes. Of course, as identical twins, clones will have individual differences, separate identities – separate souls. However, studies of twins raised apart show remarkable similarities.
There is more in our genes than we often realize. Just think how attractive that could be to some dictator who fancies the idea of watching him or herself growing up, or dreams of populating the world with a new race of genetically superior people. Humans will almost certainly be able to clone the dead too, from cells taken from their bodies before they die and kept alive in culture. This is a standard technique. In this way, parents could reproduce a carbon copy of a child who tragically died. For years, many scientists have been telling us that human cloning was impossible, and would never be possible.
How wrong they all were. It is absurd for geneticists and embryologists to mock and stifle debate by dismissing vital issues as science fiction. ” As we have seen recently, yesterday’s science fiction is today’s reality when it comes to genes. We can hardly keep pace with the lightning advances being made. So let us all ask, is this a morally right thing to do, to make clones of one’s self to alter the course of mankind. Are we Gods?Ethics and Morals
