Cloning: Why we shouldn’t be against itLet American Consumer Counseling Help you Get Out of Debt!Cloning:Why we shouldn’t be against itYou have been told that you are unique. The belief that there is no one else like you in the whole world made youfeel special and proud. This belief may not be true in the future.
The world was stunned by the news in lateFebruary 1997 that a British embryologist named Ian Wilmut and his researchteam had successfully cloned a lamb named Dolly from an adult sheep. Dollywas created by replacing the DNA of one sheep’s egg with the DNA of anothersheep’s udder. While plants and lower forms of animal life have been successfullycloned for many years now, before Wilmut’s announcement it had been thoughtby many to be unlikely that such a procedure could be performed on highermammals. The world media was immediately filled with heated discussionsabout the ethical implications of cloning. Some of the most powerful people in theworld have felt compelled to act against this threat.
President Clintonswiftly imposed a ban on federal funding for human-cloning research. Billsare in the works in both houses of Congress to outlaw human cloning whichit taken to be a fundamentally evil thing that must be stopped. But whatis exactly bad about it? From an ethical point of view , it is difficultto see exactly what is wrong with cloning human beings. The people whoare afraid of cloning tend to think that someone will break into Napoleon’sTomb, steal some DNA and make 2000 emperors. In reality, cloning wouldbe probably used by infertile people who now use donated sperm, eggs, orembryos. Do the potential harms outweigh the potential benefits of cloning?From what we know now, they don’t.
Therefore, we should not rush to bana potentially useful method of helping infertile, genetically at-risk,or single people to become parents. We can start by asking whether human beingshave a right to reproduce. I say ” Yes”. I have no moral right to tellother people they shouldn’t be able to have children, and I don’t see thatBill Clinton has that right either. If humans have a right to reproduce,what right does society have to limit the means? Essentially all reproductionis done these days with medical help- at delivery, and even before. Trulynatural human reproduction would make pregnancy-related death the number.
1killer of adult women. OF course, some forms of medical help aremore invasive than others. With in vitro fertilization, the sperm and eggare combined in the lab and surgically implanted in the womb. Less thantwo decades ago, a similar concern was raised over the ethical issues involvedin ” test-tube babies”. Today, nearly 30,000 such babies have been bornin the United States alone.
Many parents have been made happy. So whatlow or principle says that one combination of genetic material in a flaskis Ok, but another is not?Nature clones people all the time, andrather frequently. Approximately 1 in 1000 birth is of identical twins. However, despite how many or how few individual characteristics twins havein common, they are different people.
They have their own identities, theirown thoughts, and their own rights. They enter different occupations, getdifferent diseases, have different experiences with marriage, alcohol,community leadership, and etc. They have different souls as would clonedindividuals. Even if somebody did clone 2,000 Napoleons, they would beeven more different from their parents than twins are from each other becausethe cloned child would be raised in a different historical period. Theargument that cloning robs individuals of their individuality thereforedoesn’t hold. Perhaps the strongest ethical argumentagainst cloning is that it could lead to a new , unfamiliar type of familyrelationship.
We have no idea what it would be like to grow up as the childof a parent who seems to know you from inside. Some psychological characteristicsmay be biologically based and the parent will know in advance what crisesa cloned teenager will go through and how he or she will respond. It mayproduce a good and loving relationship, because the parent may understand,to greater degree than most parents, what the child is going through. ONthe other hand, most children want to have their own space. Still, justbecause a family relationship is new and untried, is not a reason to condemnit automatically. IN the past .
,many types of family relationships wereconsidered harmful but later showed to cause no harm to the children. Amongthese are joint custody after divorce, gay and lesbian parenting, and interracialadoption. As with adoption, in-vitro fertilization, and use of donor sperm,how the child will react to the news about his /her arrival in the worldwill depend to a large extent on how the parents themselves feel aboutthis mode of reproduction. Parents and children may adjust to cloning farmore easily than we might think, just as it happened with in-vitro fertilization. One recurring image in anti-cloning propagandais of some evil dictator raising an army of cloned warriors.
But who isgoing to raise such an army. Clones start out life as babies. It is mucheasier to recruit young adults than to take care of babies for 20 years. Remember that cloning isn’t the same as genetic engineering.
We can’t makesupermen-we have to find him first and his bravery might- or might not- be genetically determined. Some of you might think that cloning isplaying God. However, can you really say that you know God’s intentions. There is substantial disagreement as to what is God’ s will. But what Ifind interesting in this argument is something I read in article “Cloning:Will They Soon Clone Human Beings?” by Garner Ted Armstrong who wrote:” Anyone who has truly proved God exists; that God isn’t only Creator,but Lifegiver, Designer, Sustainer, and Ruler over all his creation, knowsthat the human family began with one man, and that a wife, miraculouslycreated form his own body and as unique and original a creation as Adamhimself, formed the first family.
Though God’s miraculous creation of Evewas far from cloning, it is interesting to note in passing that God’s ownWord says He used Adam’s rib-physical bone and tissue – to create Eve. “Another argument against cloning is thatit would be available only to the wealthy and therefore would increasesocial inequality. What else is new? This is the story of American healthcare. We need a better health care system, no a ban on new technologies. To summarize, human cloning and cloningresearch shouldn’t be made illegal by the U.
S. Federal Government becauseit may provide a way for completely sterile individuals to reproduce, itmay provide a way for homosexual couples to reproduce themselves, it probablywill provide a valuable basic research and possible spin off technologiesrelated to reproduction and development, our society has respected generalright to control ones body in regard to reproduction, and finally prohibitingit would violate the fundamental freedom of scientific inquiring. Will human cloning be done? Undoubtedly. The technique used in sheep cloning does not require a highly sophisticatedlaboratory. Since the United States government doesn’t support researchon the human cloning, and the United Kingdom, France , and Germany havebanned cloning, the research making cloning possible may take place inAsia, Eastern Europe, or the Near East. Much of it may take place in secret,and it will occur regardless of any United States policy.
According tothe aˆ¦. . approximately 80 % of Americans feel that cloningis wrong. However, the vast majority of people, including those who railagainst cloning research , owe their very lives to previous medical discoveries. Don’t let the forces of ignorance and fear turn us back from the research,and at this point, do not worry about Napolion’s Tomb .
Only living cellscan be cloned.
