Why Is Human Cloning Wrong
DISCUSSION ESSAY
Human cloning: right or wrong?
Since the arrival of the scientific temper in humankind around the 17th century, specially with the creation of the Royal Society, human beings began to discover things that once were thought impossible, and nowadays improvements in technology and science have allowed wonders like cloning. The concept of cloning may be defined as "the creation of a genetically identical copy of an existing, or previously existing, being or growing cloned tissue from that individual" (Human cloning , 2015). The first experiment regarding animal cloning was around 1952, yet scientists did not obtain good results in mammals until 1970 when they successfully transferred an embryo from …show more content…
an adult sheep; and the outcome of this investigation was the cloned ewe called "Dolly" (Rawat, 2015). Since then the question about whether to expand cloning investigation to humans or not arose. In this way, the possibility of cloning humans gives birth to a great spread of opportunities to explore the human body and achieve scientific developement; however, it creates also a controversial debate to take place worldwide. Thus, this essay will discuss and analyse different viewpoints about whether human cloning should be considered right or wrong, looking at the variety of the advantages and disadvantages that may cause; and, finally, I will discuss viewpoints that emerge from the influence of popular culture dealing with human cloning.
First of all, there is a branch of experts who support human cloning in order to achieve medical breakthroughs.
According to them it is important to mark the difference between "reproductive" cloning and "therapeutic" cloning. While the first one is a kind of asexual reproduction in which "a child produced by cloning would be the genetic duplicate of an existing person" (Reproductive Cloning Arguments Pro and Con, 2006), the other one deals with the production of human embryos by taking genetic material from an adult 's cell and put it inside an empty egg cell, and then these experts defend that this new cell will open the doors to the developement of medical treatements (Q&A: Therapeutic human cloning, 2000). In this way, these supporters focus principally on the production of organs or tissues created through cloning that replace or repare the original ones depending on the degree of damage in which they are; in other words, they believe therapeutic cloning to be beneficial. It is argued that in this way these copied organs do not have the possibility to be rejected by the body of the affected person, therefore, thanks to this, illnesses such as Alzheimer 's disease, Parkinson 's disease, diabetes, heart failure or degenerative joint disease among other problems could be solved if human cloning were accepted to be developed, instead of being taken from the most negative perspective towards the possible impacts on society (Smith, 2002). It is also argued that human …show more content…
reproductive cloning may lead to solve the problem of infertility which affects both women and men equally around the world. Cloning could mean hope for those infertile couples who are desperate to have children that are biologically related to them; to reflect this, I will take a marrriage couple from California as an example. In America there are around 12 millions of infertile persons, among them there is this couple, Anne and Bob, who have a fertility problem that leaves them with no other solution but cloning. However, this is not an available option, since California has banned human cloning, negating this couple their last resort (Cloning For Infertile Couples?, 1998). Many people could argue that several countries worldwide are deciding to directly ban cloning without taking into account the large amount of cases like the one of this exemplified couple.
In this way, the argument of using cloning to create organs in order to cure certain diseases seems to be logical because the majority of people tends to get the two different kinds of human cloning mixed up; that is why these experts consider necessary for everyone to understand the difference, because the focus on "therapeutic" cloning is apparently a strong argument in favour of the allowance of this genetic copying. Now, if we look to the other argument, which is the one about cloning being the cure for infertility, the goal is more demanding than the other one because here the aim of cloning is creating a human being, while in the previous argument the aim was just the production of organs or tissues; but it seems logical to argue that therapeutic cloning may be beneficial for society, as well as any kind regarding fertility, since it would allow people to form a family. Nevertheless, cloning as the solution for fertility problems, although it seems to be a strong argument to develop this new reproductive technology, it may cause more controversial arguments against it, making more evident the effects that this "reproductive" cloning may cause in society in contrast with "therapeutic" cloning.
Contrary to the previous viewpoint stated, when thinking about an opposite stance towards this issue, the religious viewpoint is usually one of the first ones that comes to mind, specially Christianism. The possibility of cloning human beings seems to have forced Christian leaders to present an ethical attitude regarding its morality, and this appears to have awaken the desire to ban reproductive cloning. Therefore, they argue that the cloning practice violates certain aspects of human dignity, concept which expresses "the idea that a being has an innate right to be valued and to receive ethical treatment" (Dignity, 2015). The Christian belief on this human dignity makes them to think that if the soul enters the body when the union between the sperm and the egg takes place, zygotes are already human for having souls; therefore, it could be argued that creating cloned zygotes, which are supposed to have a soul as well and that have few possibilities of surviving, would be the same as murder, since you could be killing a future being (Christian views on cloning, 2015). This argument was supported by the Pope John Paul II, who claimed that "regardless of the objective for which it was done, human embryonic cloning conflicts with the international legal norms that protect human dignity" (Christian views on cloning, 2015); and also by the Council of Europe 's Convention for the Protection of Human Rights, which claims that "the instrumentalization of human beings through the deliberate creation of genetically identical human beings is contrary to human dignity and thus constitutes a misuse of biology and medicine" (Caulfield, 2003). Besides, another argument of theirs and the commonest known by most people interested in the matter is the fact that, when carrying out the process of cloning a human, scientists are rather imitating the role of God in a blasphemous way. In other words, they are "playing God", which refers to "anything that interferes with nature, or the natural progression of life, interferes with God’s plan for humanity, and is therefore morally wrong" (Alvarez, 2002); or being more concrete "playing God" when cloning is considered to be wrong morally speaking because it does not create life in a non-natural way, but artificially (Alvarez, 2002).
Analysing the stated above, about the human dignity issue, it could be claimed that the arguments related to it are rather weak because whether a zygote is in fact a human being or not, the concept of dignity cannot be well held here. It seems that this concept is very related to the "uniqueness" of every person, so by producing a genetic copy of an existing person, his or her individuality is questioned. However, this can be refuted by the assumption that even if the clone possesses the same DNA than the original person, their experiences in life will be different, so they will become different individuals with their own "uniqueness". Therefore, this argument regarding human dignity does not seem to be consistent. Besides, regarding the argument of considering cloning as "playing God", it appears that it cannot be maintained by itself, since it is only based on religious beliefs, which are not demonstrated to be true. Moreover, with the definitions of "playing God" mentioned in the previous paragraph, it seems that, according to them, all kinds of scientific artificial repoductive methods such as insemination or IVF (In Vitro Fertilisation), together with human cloning, should not be allowed either; which appears not to be very logical because it will condemn all hopes for those persons who cannot have children by means of natural ways.
Finally, it may be also important to mention the viewpoint of those persons who have been influenced by popular culture regarding science fiction, particularly about the issue of human cloning. Taking films as the main example of popular culture may be the obvious way to show this influence. Some people believe that usually films based on this theme are apparently a good illustration of the benefits that cloning can cause but also the damaging consequences that it may have on society at large. In this way, it could be said that most people take films as reference when deciding what posture they will assume about the issue of human cloning, which may have an effect on policy developement. Yet, the final message most people seem to obtain from pop culture is that cloning is not a good idea, because it appears to bring catastrophic consequences to mankind (Pop culture puts spin on cloning, 2008). Therefore, these influenced people argue that cloning may result in some of the possible scenarios depicted on movies such as The Island in which clones "are used for organ harvesting and surrogate motherhood for wealthy people in the outside world" (The Island (2005 film), 2015); or films like Judge Dredd and Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, "where the clones are created with the idea of having a huge army of genetically superior warriors that immediately obey their creators ' every command" (10 Things Movies and TV Always Get Wrong About Human Cloning, 2010). Thus, people afraid of this possible consequences on society adopt a negative attitude towards the developement of human cloning, due to this bad illustration of the creation of lives in an artificial way. On the other hand, other people argue that films should not be taken as pieces of evidence to reach an opinion since they are not accurately based on actual facts, either regarding cloning advantages or disadvantages (Pop culture puts spin on cloning, 2008). Yet, in a way, they believe that films should be taken into account because they can illustrate what seems to be morally wrong, as in the case of using clones as "cattle" like in The Island (The Island (2005 film), 2015).
Now, regarding the argument that cloning may give birth to terrible consequences as seen in films, it appears not be realistic because it could be said that they are not sepparating fiction from reality, so the arguments they extract from films may never be strong ones insomuch as they are not based on actual data. However, if we look to the other branch of people who argue that films cannot be indeed the source for opinions, they seem to be right because they do not take films as actual facts but as fiction, which could be said to be the proper way to look at them. Also, these people argue that, even so, we can watch these films as examples of moral teachings; however, this seems not to be very logical when they believe that fiction must remain fiction.
To sum up, this paper has discussed and analysed the variety of viewpoints regarding the possibility of human cloning as being good or bad, showing its different benefits and harms; and then it has also been discussed the role of human cloning in popular culture and the influence it may have on people 's opinion. This issue seems to be quite controversial, presenting several points of view in favour that may have more supporters such as the therapeutic use of cloning and less in the case or reproductive cloning; yet both may be beneficial for society since it allows people to break the limits of medicine. However, other attitudes are very pessimistic and go against cloning, principally Christian religion, as they consider cloning as murdering, although they present arguments that may be considered weak and blind due to their religious beliefs. Finally, there are arguments that have arisen from the influence of popular culture that tends to be negative and may be seen as not very logical because films, for instance, cannot be taken as reasonable sources of information since they are just works of fiction. Thus, it seems that human cloning is always going to be quite controversial, yet if it end up being carried out, it would be reasonable to conclude that scientists must be very careful with the way they would experiment with it.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
"10 Things Movies and TV Always Get Wrong About Human Cloning". 2010. http://www.thegeektwins.com/2010/01/top-10-human-cloning-mistakes-in-movies.html#.VPGsQPmG9z8. Date accessed: 27/02/2015
Alvarez, B. 2002. http://www.iep.utm.edu/cloning/#SH5c. Date accessed: 25/02/2015
Caulfield, T. 2003. http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6939/4/3#B15. Date: 25/02/2015
"Christian views on cloning".
2015. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_views_on_cloning#Defining_Dignity. Date accessed: 25/02/2015
"Cloning For Infertile Couples?". 1998. CBS News. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cloning-for-infertile-couples/. Date accessed: 23/02/2015
"Dignity". 2015. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dignity. Date accessed: 25/02/2015
"Human cloning". 2015. http://www.sciencedaily.com/articles/h/human_cloning.htm. Date accessed: 23/02/2015
"Pop culture puts spin on cloning". 2008. http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/ideas/story.html?id=4fe578b3-ff0d-4cd0-9e48-de4149b6ec30. Date accessed: 27/02/2015
"Q&A: Therapeutic human cloning". 2000. BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/859672.stm. Date accessed: 23/02/2015
Rawat, D. 2015. http://listcrux.com/10-reasons-why-human-cloning-is-bad-for-society-at-large/. Date accessed: 23/02/2015
"Reproductive Cloning Arguments Pro and Con". 2006. http://www.geneticsandsociety.org/article.php?id=282. Date accessed: 23/02/2015
Smith, S. 2002. http://www.humancloning.org/benefits.php. Date accessed: 23/02/2015
"The Island (2005 film)". 2015. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_%282005_film%29. Date accessed:
27/02/2015
Human cloning: right or wrong?
Since the arrival of the scientific temper in humankind around the 17th century, specially with the creation of the Royal Society, human beings began to discover things that once were thought impossible, and nowadays improvements in technology and science have allowed wonders like cloning. The concept of cloning may be defined as "the creation of a genetically identical copy of an existing, or previously existing, being or growing cloned tissue from that individual" (Human cloning , 2015). The first experiment regarding animal cloning was around 1952, yet scientists did not obtain good results in mammals until 1970 when they successfully transferred an embryo from …show more content…
an adult sheep; and the outcome of this investigation was the cloned ewe called "Dolly" (Rawat, 2015). Since then the question about whether to expand cloning investigation to humans or not arose. In this way, the possibility of cloning humans gives birth to a great spread of opportunities to explore the human body and achieve scientific developement; however, it creates also a controversial debate to take place worldwide. Thus, this essay will discuss and analyse different viewpoints about whether human cloning should be considered right or wrong, looking at the variety of the advantages and disadvantages that may cause; and, finally, I will discuss viewpoints that emerge from the influence of popular culture dealing with human cloning.
First of all, there is a branch of experts who support human cloning in order to achieve medical breakthroughs.
According to them it is important to mark the difference between "reproductive" cloning and "therapeutic" cloning. While the first one is a kind of asexual reproduction in which "a child produced by cloning would be the genetic duplicate of an existing person" (Reproductive Cloning Arguments Pro and Con, 2006), the other one deals with the production of human embryos by taking genetic material from an adult 's cell and put it inside an empty egg cell, and then these experts defend that this new cell will open the doors to the developement of medical treatements (Q&A: Therapeutic human cloning, 2000). In this way, these supporters focus principally on the production of organs or tissues created through cloning that replace or repare the original ones depending on the degree of damage in which they are; in other words, they believe therapeutic cloning to be beneficial. It is argued that in this way these copied organs do not have the possibility to be rejected by the body of the affected person, therefore, thanks to this, illnesses such as Alzheimer 's disease, Parkinson 's disease, diabetes, heart failure or degenerative joint disease among other problems could be solved if human cloning were accepted to be developed, instead of being taken from the most negative perspective towards the possible impacts on society (Smith, 2002). It is also argued that human …show more content…
reproductive cloning may lead to solve the problem of infertility which affects both women and men equally around the world. Cloning could mean hope for those infertile couples who are desperate to have children that are biologically related to them; to reflect this, I will take a marrriage couple from California as an example. In America there are around 12 millions of infertile persons, among them there is this couple, Anne and Bob, who have a fertility problem that leaves them with no other solution but cloning. However, this is not an available option, since California has banned human cloning, negating this couple their last resort (Cloning For Infertile Couples?, 1998). Many people could argue that several countries worldwide are deciding to directly ban cloning without taking into account the large amount of cases like the one of this exemplified couple.
In this way, the argument of using cloning to create organs in order to cure certain diseases seems to be logical because the majority of people tends to get the two different kinds of human cloning mixed up; that is why these experts consider necessary for everyone to understand the difference, because the focus on "therapeutic" cloning is apparently a strong argument in favour of the allowance of this genetic copying. Now, if we look to the other argument, which is the one about cloning being the cure for infertility, the goal is more demanding than the other one because here the aim of cloning is creating a human being, while in the previous argument the aim was just the production of organs or tissues; but it seems logical to argue that therapeutic cloning may be beneficial for society, as well as any kind regarding fertility, since it would allow people to form a family. Nevertheless, cloning as the solution for fertility problems, although it seems to be a strong argument to develop this new reproductive technology, it may cause more controversial arguments against it, making more evident the effects that this "reproductive" cloning may cause in society in contrast with "therapeutic" cloning.
Contrary to the previous viewpoint stated, when thinking about an opposite stance towards this issue, the religious viewpoint is usually one of the first ones that comes to mind, specially Christianism. The possibility of cloning human beings seems to have forced Christian leaders to present an ethical attitude regarding its morality, and this appears to have awaken the desire to ban reproductive cloning. Therefore, they argue that the cloning practice violates certain aspects of human dignity, concept which expresses "the idea that a being has an innate right to be valued and to receive ethical treatment" (Dignity, 2015). The Christian belief on this human dignity makes them to think that if the soul enters the body when the union between the sperm and the egg takes place, zygotes are already human for having souls; therefore, it could be argued that creating cloned zygotes, which are supposed to have a soul as well and that have few possibilities of surviving, would be the same as murder, since you could be killing a future being (Christian views on cloning, 2015). This argument was supported by the Pope John Paul II, who claimed that "regardless of the objective for which it was done, human embryonic cloning conflicts with the international legal norms that protect human dignity" (Christian views on cloning, 2015); and also by the Council of Europe 's Convention for the Protection of Human Rights, which claims that "the instrumentalization of human beings through the deliberate creation of genetically identical human beings is contrary to human dignity and thus constitutes a misuse of biology and medicine" (Caulfield, 2003). Besides, another argument of theirs and the commonest known by most people interested in the matter is the fact that, when carrying out the process of cloning a human, scientists are rather imitating the role of God in a blasphemous way. In other words, they are "playing God", which refers to "anything that interferes with nature, or the natural progression of life, interferes with God’s plan for humanity, and is therefore morally wrong" (Alvarez, 2002); or being more concrete "playing God" when cloning is considered to be wrong morally speaking because it does not create life in a non-natural way, but artificially (Alvarez, 2002).
Analysing the stated above, about the human dignity issue, it could be claimed that the arguments related to it are rather weak because whether a zygote is in fact a human being or not, the concept of dignity cannot be well held here. It seems that this concept is very related to the "uniqueness" of every person, so by producing a genetic copy of an existing person, his or her individuality is questioned. However, this can be refuted by the assumption that even if the clone possesses the same DNA than the original person, their experiences in life will be different, so they will become different individuals with their own "uniqueness". Therefore, this argument regarding human dignity does not seem to be consistent. Besides, regarding the argument of considering cloning as "playing God", it appears that it cannot be maintained by itself, since it is only based on religious beliefs, which are not demonstrated to be true. Moreover, with the definitions of "playing God" mentioned in the previous paragraph, it seems that, according to them, all kinds of scientific artificial repoductive methods such as insemination or IVF (In Vitro Fertilisation), together with human cloning, should not be allowed either; which appears not to be very logical because it will condemn all hopes for those persons who cannot have children by means of natural ways.
Finally, it may be also important to mention the viewpoint of those persons who have been influenced by popular culture regarding science fiction, particularly about the issue of human cloning. Taking films as the main example of popular culture may be the obvious way to show this influence. Some people believe that usually films based on this theme are apparently a good illustration of the benefits that cloning can cause but also the damaging consequences that it may have on society at large. In this way, it could be said that most people take films as reference when deciding what posture they will assume about the issue of human cloning, which may have an effect on policy developement. Yet, the final message most people seem to obtain from pop culture is that cloning is not a good idea, because it appears to bring catastrophic consequences to mankind (Pop culture puts spin on cloning, 2008). Therefore, these influenced people argue that cloning may result in some of the possible scenarios depicted on movies such as The Island in which clones "are used for organ harvesting and surrogate motherhood for wealthy people in the outside world" (The Island (2005 film), 2015); or films like Judge Dredd and Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, "where the clones are created with the idea of having a huge army of genetically superior warriors that immediately obey their creators ' every command" (10 Things Movies and TV Always Get Wrong About Human Cloning, 2010). Thus, people afraid of this possible consequences on society adopt a negative attitude towards the developement of human cloning, due to this bad illustration of the creation of lives in an artificial way. On the other hand, other people argue that films should not be taken as pieces of evidence to reach an opinion since they are not accurately based on actual facts, either regarding cloning advantages or disadvantages (Pop culture puts spin on cloning, 2008). Yet, in a way, they believe that films should be taken into account because they can illustrate what seems to be morally wrong, as in the case of using clones as "cattle" like in The Island (The Island (2005 film), 2015).
Now, regarding the argument that cloning may give birth to terrible consequences as seen in films, it appears not be realistic because it could be said that they are not sepparating fiction from reality, so the arguments they extract from films may never be strong ones insomuch as they are not based on actual data. However, if we look to the other branch of people who argue that films cannot be indeed the source for opinions, they seem to be right because they do not take films as actual facts but as fiction, which could be said to be the proper way to look at them. Also, these people argue that, even so, we can watch these films as examples of moral teachings; however, this seems not to be very logical when they believe that fiction must remain fiction.
To sum up, this paper has discussed and analysed the variety of viewpoints regarding the possibility of human cloning as being good or bad, showing its different benefits and harms; and then it has also been discussed the role of human cloning in popular culture and the influence it may have on people 's opinion. This issue seems to be quite controversial, presenting several points of view in favour that may have more supporters such as the therapeutic use of cloning and less in the case or reproductive cloning; yet both may be beneficial for society since it allows people to break the limits of medicine. However, other attitudes are very pessimistic and go against cloning, principally Christian religion, as they consider cloning as murdering, although they present arguments that may be considered weak and blind due to their religious beliefs. Finally, there are arguments that have arisen from the influence of popular culture that tends to be negative and may be seen as not very logical because films, for instance, cannot be taken as reasonable sources of information since they are just works of fiction. Thus, it seems that human cloning is always going to be quite controversial, yet if it end up being carried out, it would be reasonable to conclude that scientists must be very careful with the way they would experiment with it.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
"10 Things Movies and TV Always Get Wrong About Human Cloning". 2010. http://www.thegeektwins.com/2010/01/top-10-human-cloning-mistakes-in-movies.html#.VPGsQPmG9z8. Date accessed: 27/02/2015
Alvarez, B. 2002. http://www.iep.utm.edu/cloning/#SH5c. Date accessed: 25/02/2015
Caulfield, T. 2003. http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6939/4/3#B15. Date: 25/02/2015
"Christian views on cloning".
2015. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_views_on_cloning#Defining_Dignity. Date accessed: 25/02/2015
"Cloning For Infertile Couples?". 1998. CBS News. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cloning-for-infertile-couples/. Date accessed: 23/02/2015
"Dignity". 2015. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dignity. Date accessed: 25/02/2015
"Human cloning". 2015. http://www.sciencedaily.com/articles/h/human_cloning.htm. Date accessed: 23/02/2015
"Pop culture puts spin on cloning". 2008. http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/ideas/story.html?id=4fe578b3-ff0d-4cd0-9e48-de4149b6ec30. Date accessed: 27/02/2015
"Q&A: Therapeutic human cloning". 2000. BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/859672.stm. Date accessed: 23/02/2015
Rawat, D. 2015. http://listcrux.com/10-reasons-why-human-cloning-is-bad-for-society-at-large/. Date accessed: 23/02/2015
"Reproductive Cloning Arguments Pro and Con". 2006. http://www.geneticsandsociety.org/article.php?id=282. Date accessed: 23/02/2015
Smith, S. 2002. http://www.humancloning.org/benefits.php. Date accessed: 23/02/2015
"The Island (2005 film)". 2015. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_%282005_film%29. Date accessed:
27/02/2015