Human Cloning Essay, Research Paper

The purpose of this year’s study is to determine what effects does human cloning have on society and how people react to human cloning. The most commonly cited ethical and moral arguments against human cloning seem to originate from religious perspectives. These religious arguments can even be made by politicians and scientists with religious sympathies. Many religious philosophies teach, for example, that human life is unique and special and should be created, determined and controlled only by their deities. Many religions believe in the existence of, and in the individuality of, a human soul. Many Christians, for example, will be concerned about whether it will be possible to clone the human soul, along with the human. If it is possible to clone the soul, what will this “mean”? In contrast, if a person is cloned, but not their soul, what will this “mean”? Can a clone without a soul be destroyed and not offend moral or religious beliefs? Cloning will be divined by many as humans assuming the powers, the providence, and the jurisdiction their deities or other spiritual powers of their supernatural universe. (Watson 98)

Cloning is the production of a human or animal part that is genetically identical to the original. The cloning of cells from human embroyos is a specific process using stem cells, the very earliest forms of cells, which later develop into the 216 different cells that make up adult humans.

At this early stage, these embryonic cells are flexible and could potentially be used to create any kind of human cell – hence their value to the scientific community. If the nucleus, the control centre of an adult cell, is transplanted into one of these stem cells, it could produce the correct human tissue desired. (Potonn 99)

The new tissue could be used to treat disease. Transplant patients would no longer have to wait for someone else’s tissue that their bodies might reject. They can have themselves cloned to produce perfect match tissue. This would do away with the powerful anti-rejection drugs needed to tame the immune systems of transplant patients. Some experts believe it may be possible one day to “grow” whole replacement organs in the laboratory. Likewise, “body repair kits” could be produced in which every newborn baby in the country has a supply of cloned cells in case a transplant is needed in later life. Possible cures for diseases would be any degenerative disease where one cell type has gone wrong. This includes Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Huntingdon’s Chorea, diabetes and cancers. New muscle could also be produced to repair damaged hearts. Therapeutic cloning could eventually heal injuries such as burns. It would also end the long search for the right bone marrow donor in leukaemia cases, as perfect-match bone marrow could be created from a patient’s own skin cells. Scientists estimate that 100m people could benefit worldwide. (Woodward 97)

The embryo that was cloned, would be destroyed. However, scientists plan to remove cells before the embryos are 14 days old, stopping short of creating a cloned embryo that develops beyond a week. They hope this will circumvent ethical concerns about the creation of a cloned adult. (Bailey 97)

The Catholic church objects to any research which involves the overproduction and then destruction of human embryos. It says any human embryo – including the small clump of cells produced for this research – is sacrosanct. Anti-abortion groups are suspicious that scientists want to develop therapeutic cloning for reproductive purposes. The pressure group, Life, has voiced fears that embryos would be cloned, implanted into a surrogate mother, allowed to develop for a full pregnancy, then killed for their hearts and other organs. Some argue that it is possible to remove so-called stem cells from adults and is therefore not necessary to produce cells from embryos. But although research has shown that adult bone marrow cells can be transformed into liver cells, scientists believe that only embryonic stem cells could produce a complete range of tissue types. (Oliver 97)

Cloning by nuclear transfer also has the potential for direct human applications-the production of embryos or even persons as a result of human cloning. These uses, however, are much more controversial, for they require the production of an embryo, fetus, or child with the same DNA as another. Such uses lie at the center of the current debate over the acceptability of human cloning and public policy toward it. . Cloning of embryos to treat infertility. – One likely use would be the cloning of embryos to enhance the fertility of couples, with viable egg and sperm going through in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment for infertility. Cloning might occur by embryo splitting or by removing the cell or blastomeres of one or more embryos and placing them into enucleated eggs to create additional embryos. The purpose here either would be to assure the creation of enough embryos to start a pregnancy in cases when only one or two eggs are produced or to eliminate the high costs and physical burdens of additional hyperstimulated cycles and surgical retrieval. Cloning embryos in these ways would produce one or more embryos with the same genome (although mitochondrial DNA will differ, except in the case of embryo splitting). If they were placed in the uterus at the same time, they might produce two or more offspring with the same genome, resulting in the novelty of deliberately created twins. More problematic situations arise if a child is born from the first transfer, and the couple later thaws and transfers the other cloned embryos in order to have additional children. The result could be one or more children born at different points in time with the same genome. (Why Files 97)

Based on the above literature the researcher hypothesizes that the majority of people will belive that human cloning should not be allowed, and not to be tampered with.