Cloning Essay, Research Paper

Cloning: Why we shouldn’t be against it

Essay submitted by Marina

You have been told that you are unique. The belief that there is no one else like you in

the whole world made you feel special and proud. This belief may not be true in the

future.

The world was stunned by the news in late February 1997 that a British embryologist

named Ian Wilmut and his research team had successfully cloned a lamb named Dolly

from an adult sheep. Dolly was created by replacing the DNA of one sheep’s egg with

the DNA of another sheep’s udder. While plants and lower forms of animal life have been

successfully cloned for many years now, before Wilmut’s announcement it had been

thought by many to be unlikely that such a procedure could be performed on higher

mammals. The world media was immediately filled with heated discussions about the

ethical implications of cloning.

Some of the most powerful people in the world have felt compelled to act against this

threat. President Clinton swiftly imposed a ban on federal funding for human-cloning

research. Bills are in the works in both houses of Congress to outlaw human cloning

which it taken to be a fundamentally evil thing that must be stopped. But what is

exactly bad about it? From an ethical point of view , it is difficult to see exactly what is

wrong with cloning human beings. The people who are afraid of cloning tend to think

that someone will break into Napoleon’s Tomb, steal some DNA and make 2000

emperors. In reality, cloning would be probably used by infertile people who now use

donated sperm, eggs, or embryos. Do the potential harms outweigh the potential

benefits of cloning? From what we know now, they don’t. Therefore, we should not

rush to ban a potentially useful method of helping infertile, genetically at-risk, or single

people to become parents.

We can start by asking whether human beings have a right to reproduce. I say ” Yes”. I

have no moral right to tell other people they shouldn’t be able to have children, and I

don’t see that Bill Clinton has that right either. If humans have a right to reproduce,

what right does society have to limit the means? Essentially all reproduction is done

these days with medical help- at delivery, and even before. Truly natural human

reproduction would make pregnancy-related death the number.1 killer of adult women.

OF course, some forms of medical help are more invasive than others. With in vitro

fertilization, the sperm and egg are combined in the lab and surgically implanted in the

womb. Less than two decades ago, a similar concern was raised over the ethical issues

involved in ” test-tube babies”. Today, nearly 30,000 such babies have been born in the

United States alone. Many parents have been made happy. So what low or principle

says that one combination of genetic material in a flask is Ok, but another is not?

Nature clones people all the time, and rather frequently. Approximately 1 in 1000 birth

is of identical twins. However, despite how many or how few individual characteristics

twins have in common, they are different people. They have their own identities, their

own thoughts, and their own rights. They enter different occupations, get different

diseases, have different experiences with marriage, alcohol, community leadership, and

etc. They have different souls as would cloned individuals. Even if somebody did clone

2,000 Napoleons, they would be even more different from their parents than twins are

from each other because the cloned child would be raised in a different historical

period. The argument that cloning robs individuals of their individuality therefore doesn’t

hold.

Perhaps the strongest ethical argument against cloning is that it could lead to a new ,

unfamiliar type of family relationship. We have no idea what it would be like to grow up

as the child of a parent who seems to know you from inside. Some psychological

characteristics may be biologically based and the parent will know in advance what

crises a cloned teenager will go through and how he or she will respond. It may produce

a good and loving relationship, because the parent may understand, to greater degree

than most parents, what the child is going through. ON the other hand, most children

want to have their own space. Still, just because a family relationship is new and

untried, is not a reason to condemn it automatically. IN the past . ,many types of

family relationships were considered harmful but later showed to cause no harm to the

children. Among these are joint custody after divorce, gay and lesbian parenting, and

interracial adoption. 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 world will depend to a

large extent on how the parents themselves feel about this mode of reproduction.

Parents and children may adjust to cloning far more easily than we might think, just as

it happened with in-vitro fertilization.

One recurring image in anti-cloning propaganda is of some evil dictator raising an army

of cloned warriors. But who is going to raise such an army. Clones start out life as

babies. It is much easier 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 make

supermen-we have to find him first and his bravery might- or might not – be genetically

determined.

Some of you might think that cloning is playing 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 I find 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, knows that the human family began with one

man, and that a wife, miraculously created form his own body and as unique and

original a creation as Adam himself, formed the first family. Though God’s miraculous

creation of Eve was far from cloning, it is interesting to note in passing that God’s own

Word says He used Adam’s rib-physical bone and tissue – to create Eve.”

Another argument against cloning is that it would be available only to the wealthy and

therefore would increase social inequality. What else is new? This is the story of

American health care. We need a better health care system, no a ban on new

technologies.

To summarize, human cloning and cloning research shouldn’t be made illegal by the U.S.

Federal Government because it may provide a way for completely sterile individuals to

reproduce, it may provide a way for homosexual couples to reproduce themselves, it

probably will provide a valuable basic research and possible spin off technologies related

to reproduction and development, our society has respected general right to control

ones body in regard to reproduction, and finally prohibiting it 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 sophisticated laboratory. Since the United States government

doesn’t support research on the human cloning, and the United Kingdom, France , and

Germany have banned cloning, the research making cloning possible may take place in

Asia, 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 to the ….. approximately 80

% of Americans feel that cloning is wrong. However, the vast majority of people,

including those who rail against 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 cells can

be cloned.