Cloning Essay, Research Paper

Cloning Humans Is Ethically Permissible

The question whether it is ethically permissible to clone humans has been a debate in the U.S. and in other parts of the world for some time. There are some good reasons that human cloning is relevant in our society, and there are some goods reasons that we shouldn’t practice human cloning. Human cloning is an unordinary practice through which many of us are unfamiliar with, but when you look at the advantages to what can be achieved from cloning, you start to realize that human cloning is acceptable if it is used in a proper manner and regulated in today’s society.

Cloning became a serious issue in 1997 when Ian Campbell of Scotland announced to the world that he had cloned a sheep by transferring the gene containing a nucleus from a single cell of an adult sheep’s mammary gland into an egg cell whose own nucleus had been removed. After “Dolly” the lamb was created, people realized that we were not that far off from being able to clone human beings.

This discovery shocked many people. They argued that “Dolly” was not a “work of nature or nature’s God but of man”(Kass 334). This is where the people who are against cloning say that it like “playing god.” But cloning “does not create life as most people argue; it merely produces life from existing life”(Conceiving a Clone). Cloning can be thought of as an extension of procedures like in-vitro fertilization. Leon Kass argues in his article “The Wisdom Of Repugnance”, “cloning is just a new option for exercising an individual’s right to reproduce or to have the kind of child he or she wants” (Kass 334).

He also states in his article that cloning brings about some issues of identity and individuality. This is where the cloning issue is being explained and argued against for the wrong reasons. Kass the biochemist is looking at the cloning issue from the wrong direction.

Surely it would be wrong for people to create a child to fit in their own personal needs. Cloning can be very useful to us in everyday life. “If a child were to be cloned, it would be the same as an identical twin”(Conceiving a Clone). It would be a living human being with his or her own personality. The treatment of diseases such as Parkinson’s disease and Diabetes could be achieved through cloning research. Diabetes research shows how producing skins cells and placing them in the pancreas; allowing them to produce insulin would be an affective treatment. “Because neurons do not regenerate, cloning research could allow the reprogramming of cells into neurons to replace those damaged by Parkinson’s diseases” (Conceiving a Clone). Cloning would also be to affective in transplanting organs from one species to another; this provides a good solution for the organ shortage problem that we face today. An even better form of cloning would be to clone and grow a specific human organ directly. This form of technology is not yet in our reach but maybe soon it can be accomplished. According to Dr Patrick Dixon, author of “The Genetic Revolution”, “Headless human clones will be used to grow organs and tissues for transplant surgery in the next 5-10 years” (Dixon).

After reviewing the information at hand, I feel that the reasons for the cloning of human beings outweigh the reasons against the idea of human cloning. It has been seen that if we were to clone humans that many problems, such as treatment of diseases, and needed organs could be solved. I feel that it is more important to treat people using human cloning, than complain about how it is unnatural. If someone has a chance to be helped from cloning, then I feel that It would be unethical to let someone suffer if they could be helped be using a cloned organ. As long as cloning isn’t used to make a specific individual to satisfy someone’s own needs. Like a person wanted their child to have certain characteristics, that is the kind of cloning that is unethical. In conclusion, human cloning can, and should be experimented on, especially in today’s society where medicine and treatments are constantly changing.

Work Cited

Dixon, Patrick. “Headless human clones will grow organs in 10 years.”

19 October 1997. http://www.globalchange.com/frogs.htm.

Kass, Leon. “The Wisdom Of Repugnance.”

The New Republic, (June 2, 1997).

Kayotic Development. “Conceiving a Clone.”

1998.*http://library.thinkquest.org/24355/home.html*