Cloning

Cloning humans has recently become a possibility that seems much more feasible today than it was twenty years ago. Cloning is a method that involves the production of a group of cells or organisms that all derive from a single individual. It is not known when or how cloning humans really became a possibility, but it is known that there are two possible ways that we can clone humans. The first way involves splitting an embryo into several halves and creating many new individuals from the embryo. The second method of cloning, a human involves taking cells from an already existing human being and cloning them, in turn, creating other individuals that are identical to that particular person. Keeping these two methods in mind, two very important questions arise on the technological and ethical sides of this issue. First a sheep was cloned, now it could to be a human being! Sheep embryos have some characteristics that make cloning them much easier than cloning human embryos. Even with these better odds, over 270 attempts were needed before Dolly (the only survival of the cloned sheep) was born in Scotland in 1996. Many foetal lambs that were carried to the term were born with health problems, including malformed kidneys, and all but Dolly subsequently died prematurely. For example, in the future cloning might allow a cancer patient whose bone marrow has been wiped out by radiation to be treated with bone marrow grown from another cell of his own body, this process is not possible right now. Cloning is also extremly expensive. Religious philosophies teach us that human life is unique and special. It is and should be controlled by the almighty—God. Many religions believe in the existence of human soul. (Courtesy of [])

ny people talk about the baffling ethical problems posed by new genetic technologies. Like, what happens if and when it becomes possible to successfully clone a human being?

So exactly what baffling new ethical problems would this present? If a human being was cloned, the result would be a new human being. Surely such a person would be entitled to the same human rights that everyone else has. Yes, it would be possible to clone someone just to use him as a source for spare parts for the donor of the original genetic material. And that would be wrong. Just as it would be wrong to kidnap and kill any human being just so you could use him as a source for spare parts. This one shouldn’t even be hard. A clone would not raise any new moral issues that the existence of twins has not already created. I have never heard anyone seriously propose that because someone is a twin that this calls into question what human rights he should be entitled to.

Our government, of course, once again rises to the challenge by coming up with a truly bizarre solution. A bill in Congress in 2003, the “Greenwood Amendment”, would have made “reproductive cloning” illegal while allowing “therapeutic cloning”. By “reproductive cloning” they meant cloning to produce a live baby. By “therapeutic cloning” they meant cloning to produce an embryo or baby for research or medical applications, that is, to be killed and harvested for parts. That is, a number of people in the U.S. Congress believed that cloning is //not// morally acceptable if the resultant human being is allowed to be born, grow up, and live a normal life. It is //only// morally acceptable if the resultant human being is tortured and murdered. The moral reasoning behind this position escapes me. (courtesy of http://www.johansens.us/sane/technotes/techethics.htm