To Clone or Not to Clone: A View Into the Ethics

Behind Reproductive Human Cloning

DOMENIC VALENTI
Professor Kevin VanArsdale
English Comp. 1
04/24/2008
Classical
Bioethicists, Goverment
Ethics Journal
 Before taking a step into the ethical debate on cloning, one should look at the different

forms of cloning in the scientific realm. One is Recombinant DNA Technology or DNA

Cloning; this is the process of taking a piece of DNA from an organism and placing it in a self-

reproducing organism like bacterial plasmid. The DNA that gets inserted into the self replicating

bacterial plasmid will be mass produced. This allows researchers to acquire multiple copies of

the DNA or gene they wish to studyin a safe harmless fashion. A second form of cloning is

therapeutic cloning or more commonly known as embryoniccloning. In this form of cloning

scientist take stem cells to help study the way humans develop, as well as cures and prevention

of diseases. Stem cell research is not about recreating a human life, its research that hopefully

one day will be able to reproduce human organs and tissue in order to perform transplants on

patients with malfunctioned or diseased body parts. This type of cloning is not to be confused

with Reproductive Cloning, which brings us to the ethical question whether Reproductive

Cloning of Humans should be allowed or not allowed. The actual act of human cloning has

never been tested to this day, and hopefully will remain this way.

Reproductive human cloning should be banned indefinitely due to the devastating, and

cataclysmic events that could unfold if and when researchers are able to clone human beings.

Not only would an identity crisis arise, but who would be accepting of a human to human

creation? Do you really want to see the day when your child is classified as a clone and not a

brother or sister? The day they get looked upon as second best and have to sit in the back of the

bus as the Negro community once did? Religions would be in an even hotter debate because of

mankind’s differentreligious views of cloning. Let’s not rule out the ever lingering effects of

Adolf Hitler’s master mind thinking of a perfect race. If this information were to leak into the

wrong hands, it could result in woman being subdued into medical experiments. To do human
experimenting with cloning would in no doubt cause the loss of many lives, as well as suffering

and political shambles.

The President’s Council on Bioethics in 2001 states, “cloned children would suffer from

identity problems that would compromise their human dignity and individuality. It recommends

against, “cloning to produce children”” (qtd. in Roleff 1). Theirvery value in the community

could be threatened, looked as being manufactured or duplicated. Being a compassionate person,

I would look at a clone as just another human on this earth, but not everyoneis compassionate.

The bullies at school would find it very easy to pick on kids, and with the up-rise in suicides

today among young children this would not help the cause in anyway. Over time society has

made many progressive moves to uphold people’s dignity and individualism, but are people

ready to acceptclones. It took many years to end slavery and even then it took years for Negros

to be accepted as regular humans; thanks to important activists such asMartin Luther King Jr. and

President Abraham Lincoln.

In the biological stand point of father to mother and sister to brother, a clone would be in

a category by itself. The clone would not be the direct sibling of his host mother’s children nor

would he be the brother or sister to the host mother. A diagram best describes this (Winters 11).

Being put into a category all by themselves is seclusion, andshould only be fit for animals.

Ask yourself what you see in your spouse or mate. Is it the irresistible look they give you

or the way they are just totally different from you? Over time with human cloning differences in

human beings would slowly begin to disappear. Those subtle differences would no longer attract

you to the girl or guy across the room. When humans engage in sexual intercourse they are
mixing half of their genes with the others making a variation, so that not one person is the same.

In the case of identical twins this is nature, not artificial. Not everything can be explained and

even in the case of identical twins parents torment them into being the same person, sometimes

even tearing families apart.

Diversity in the genetic code is so crucial to the survival of humans, but yet few realize it.

Virus and diseaseare evolving every day. They are evolving to try and take over, that is what

they do and what they will always do. Fortunate for us humans, we are able to evolve and change

our genetic makeup helpingus to block such viruses and diseases. Without the mixing of genes

and the assurance of genetic variation, humans may not only more susceptible to sickness, but

also biological warfare. Could not someone with immense power devise a way to strategically

attack the human population with a single virus that medicine could not yet reverse? With such a

widespread likeness of genes this could devastate a nationnot prepared with enough vaccine or a

nation without a vaccine at all. Far off the path I understand, but you have to realize and take in

all possible views when debating on the ethics of anything.

Cloning is taking a complete set of human genes from a donor and inserting them into an

embryonic egg, which is then inserted into the host mother for the duration of the regular life

cycle of ahuman embryo. So were goes my chances of getting my father genes for blue eyes?

Blue eyes are a recessive gene and must be present in both alleles on a chromosome, from

different single chromosome for the trait to show, cloning cuts out apart of genetic variation. In

theory this is an exact copy of the donor, a though scientists have found that the genes are only

part of the geneticdifference. The egg that the genes are inserted to contains Mitochondria DNA,

which arethe power supplies for cells and the human body. These also help to supply

differences into human activity.

 Religions can play tremendous influences in people’sopinions on ethics. Surprisingly

though when most people are asked about their opinions on human cloning, most rely on a

personal conviction as to whether it is ethicallyright or wrong. None the less religion has a

powerful hand in cloning.

The war of Religions and who has the better knowledge and understandingof life has

gone on for centuries. To some human cloning is a directsin and abomination to God. Catholics

and Christians view cloning as playing God. In Gen 1:26 God says “let us make man in our

image, in our likeness and let them rule over the fish of the sea...” (New Living Translation, Gen.

1:26 ). Again in Gen 1:27 it says “so God created man in his own image, in the image of God he

created him.”(Gen. 1:27). God clearly states he is the creator, not humans. Humans are to rule

over the animals and creatures of the earth, not the human. Furthermore, 2nd Cor. 10:3-5 states

that all Christians should stand up for God’s word and spread the news of his son (2 Cor. 10:3-5).

As a Christian I believe that God is powerful and to take into accounthis powers we look at the

tower of Babel. The people of the earth thought that they could build a tower grand enoughto

reach heaven and be with God. God then separated the people with a language barrier so that

confusion spilt them apart (Gen. 11:1-9). Could God not bring around a great catastrophe to stop

the very acts of being God like?

Buddhist, however believe, in non-sexual reproduction, a kind of “supernatural

phenomenon” (Engdahl 3). Over all life can legitimately begin from more than one way. The

Jewish community believes that cloning should be allowed for medical purposes despite the

dangers of complications. Over all religions will continue to clash at the very ethics of life itself,

good or bad this is diversity.

Human cloning is an A-sexual reproduction of a new human organism. Thus, whether for

medical advancements or research it is ethically wrong. Will you allow doctors to clone a human
being just to take the heart or lungsfrom them? In-vision the government raising humans on

farms, somehow making them numb enough not to know they were being used as “spare parts.”

This sounds like a sick book you would read out of some physcopaths book shelf. Maybe in the

future stem cell research (not human cloning) will provide a way that we can produce a single

heart or lung without the process of growing a fully grown human being. Until then research

involving the direct product of human reproduction via cloning should be banned.

Like with any advances in technology experiments must take place; experiments where

the transfer of a human embryo clone could have complications unfortold. The actual outcome

of the child may have birth defects or mutation not foreseen. The risk does not out way the

outcome. The sheep Dolly was finally cloned after 276 attempts; that is a 1/277 chance of

success. Even after cloned, Dolly, who only lived 6 years, was succumbed to cancer and other

medical problems. Wasting human embryos is not the only issue. You have to look at the host

mother. The egg must be implanted into a living human mother to undergo regular embryonic

life cycle. What if this causes the mother’s death? What if the human body rejects this embryo,

killing the mothers? Such experiments are inhuman and should not be tolerated.

The very idea that someone would be able to create an army of clones is pretty

farfetched, seeing how that the normal process of creating clones takes nine months per clone.

Not only the long process but being able to have that many donors seems preposterous. Just

think about it, if a country that was so power hungry, and tried to hold woman in contempt just to

do research is in-humane. So in-humaneit would most like bring around world war 3. Now I

know most people think this is science fiction thinking, but you have to realize most people

never imaginedwhat Hitler did to the Jews. The torture of men, woman, and child for what he

called scientific research and creating the perfect race. This very issue could become present, if

and when we allow the research of human cloning, and in essence human sacrifice.
 With respect to cloning for medical purposes, we must look at the evident outcome of

such an event; the unethical creation of human lives. Taken out of proportion and elevated to a

grand scale cloning is unethical. The means of experimenting on human beings and treating

them like cattle is inhuman, and not in any wayethical. Taking away a person’s individuality and

possibly their dignity is a risk far toogreat. The very creator of Dolly said he “would find it

offensive” (qtd. in Unethical, Stalcup 2) to clone a human being. The morality of cloning

depends absolutely on the goodness or badness of the motives and intentions of the cloner.

Unfortunately in the world there is just not enough good that could amount for such troubles.

John Dewey, an American philosopher once said, “Situations into which change and the

unexpected enter are a challenge to intelligence to create new principles. Morals must be a

growing science if it is to be science at all, not merely because all truth ceases to apply”

(qtd. in Science Fiction, Woodward 3).

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