The Continuing Debate Over Human Cloning In the past few years, human cloning has gone from a laboratory fantasy to a global debate. There are many arguments supporting both negative and positive effects of human cloning. Human cloning raises a lot of challenging questions about human liberty, dignity, and identity. Will human cloning be a great step for man, or will it lead to moral abyss? This question is asked all the time. With great research one would realize that with the implementation of human cloning, there would be a huge medical and non-medical advancement.
People with superior or mental attributes would be cloned, large armies could be created, single and infertile parents could have children, and certain species could be saved from extinction. In contrast to all the positives of human cloning, there are more negatives related to the subject, mostly moral and ethical negatives coming from ethicists, psychologists, theologians and the church, as well as many mandated laws against the cloning of humans. Cloning could also cause a serious overpopulation crisis. The first major point in favor of human cloning is that cancer patients would be able to have bone marrow transplants together with other organ transplants. The treatment for leukemia could be revolutionized. One of the more successful treatments for leukemia involves the transfer of the patient’s bone marrow through chemotherapy and the transplantation of healthy marrow cells.
With marrow cells that are perfect Lomax 2 genetic matches for a leukemia patient could be created from that person with one’s own cell through the use of human cloning. Organ transplants and donations are not so efficient at this point in time. It does help, but more often it does not. This is because there are a lot of factors that are taken into account when an organ is replaced with a donated one. If someone dies, and has signed a paper allowing for his or her organs to be removed from his or her corpse and donated to people in need, and the organs proves to be healthy and working, then our donation policies prove effective. This, however, is not always the case.
The fact that every second more people are born than die continues to limit the usefulness of this program. Cloning could undoubtedly remove all of these factors, by allowing corpses to rot away instead of being ripped open, and save thousands, maybe even millions, of lives. Cloning could also lead to a better treatment for heart attacks. According to the Human Cloning Foundation, doctors will be able to treat heart attack victims by cloning their healthy heart cells and injecting them into the areas of the heart that have been damaged. Heart disease is the number one killer in the United States and several other industrialized countries (Human Cloning Foundation 3). If heart disease can be cured, then human life expectancy will increase.
In addition to better treatments for heart attacks, cloning may be able to ensure that one no longer suffers because of defective genes that cause cancer (Annas 2). Although scientist, do not know exactly how cells differentiate into specific kinds of tissues, nor understand why cancerous cells lose their differentiation, cloning, at last, could answer how to switch cells on and off, thus curing cancer. Looking at human cloning from the non-medical point of view, scientist Lomax 3 could enhance cloning by understanding genetics. Human cloning, once perfected, could lead to the cloning of other things. Cows could be genetically engineered to produce pharmaceuticals in their milk. Babies could be brought up immune to diseases by simply mixing their formula with milk.
One should think about the possibilities in third world countries like Somalia, where whole villages could be made healthy and immune to diseases, and hunger could be something from the past never to return again. Another non-medical benefit from cloning is the potential for immortality. One hopes that cloning will help one to understand how to reverse DNA back to age twenty or whatever age one wanted to be (Mahendran 2). Could cloning be the long sought after fountain of youth? Furthermore, human cloning could also enhance cosmetic procedures. For instance, breast implants, which have the potential to cause .
