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Negative effects of cloning
Human cloning health issues
Ethics of cloning
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Cloning humans is a threat to our society. It presents a vast number of problems that arise with each new discovery. The first is the decrease in distinct genetic make-up. Cloning also brings up many ethical points dealing with creation and psychological well being of clones. Cloning is such a new area of study that it requires a large amount of money and offers a lot of room for mistakes.
The biggest problem with the use of cloning is the decline in genetic diversity. The biological definition of a clone is "an organism that has the same genetic information as another organism or organisms". This means that gene donors would obviously have the exact same DNA as their clones. If large groups of people have the same genetic information, a disease could instantaneously wipe out the entire population.
Our genetic make-up is what makes us unique. It gives us a sense of individuality and distinctiveness. If many people had the same DNA, how would we preserve our diversity and sense of self?
Human cloning also raises many ethical and moral issues. Different religious groups regard cloning in different ways, but most agree on one point. Cloning puts the work of God into our own hands. The creation of life then becomes a manufacturing of duplicates instead of a "creative act of God".
It is also important to consider the repercussions of cloning on the cloned individual. Numerous psychological problems may arise if a person discovers that he or she was cloned. How would a child feel if they found out that they were created to be used to donate organs or replace a lost loved one? A cloned child may also feel obligated to follow the pre-determined path of their gene donor. This would bring about a lot of confusion and emotional damage for the individual.
There is a great margin of error in the new technology of cloning. Because we are still developing these scientific procedures, there is a lot of room for mistakes. This means that in the process of experimenting, clones with great genetic abnormalities could be created. What would happen to these degenerate individuals? Should they live life as rejects of society or be disposed of as mistakes?
Cloning is currently a very expensive process. It requires large amounts of money and biological expertise. It took 277 tries to create Dolly, the first successfully cloned sheep. New techniques are constantly being developed, but even they have a success rate of 2-3%.
Kevin T. Fitzgerald divided potential scenarios for using cloning technology into three categories: "Producing a clone in order to save the life of an individual who requires a transplant; making available another reproductive option for people who wish to have genetically related children, but face physical or chr...
Human cloning is the process by which genetic material from one person would be artificially transferred into a human or animal egg cell, thereby beginning the life of a new human individual who has only one parent and who is genetically identical to that parent. The once impossible idea of cloning became a reality in 1997 when Scottish embryologist Ian Wilmut and his colleagues at the Roslin Institute in Scotland announced that a cloned sheep named Dolly was born. Dolly was created by removing the nucleus from a sheep egg cell and replacing it in the nucleus of a cell taken from the udder of another sheep. This said might sound good, but there are other pieces of information that need to be known about this process. ...
In essence, the long-term effects of cloning are completely unknown. When studying cloning, we may see its desirable effects, but we neglect its many unknown effects. At the mention of cloning, many may contemplate Mary Shelley’s famous novel Frankenstein. Although fictional, the novel does show some truth. In the novel, Shelley warns of the dangers that come as a repercussion of knowledge, with Victor Frankenstein’s dialogue “seek happiness in tranquility and avoid ambition, even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries.” (Shelley) Today, we find ourselves debating similar ethical issues that Mary Shelley considered long ago. With so many incredible discoveries that lie in our future, we must also consider the responsibilities that come with these discoveries. If not, we may suffer the same fate as Victor Frankenstein had in the novel
successful clones often have problems with their body and are subject to a short lifespan ridden with health problems. This hurts the person or animal cloned rather than to help them, making cloning an immoral
In conclusion, it is clear to see that cloning is not the taboo it has been made out to be. It is a new boundary that humanity has never encountered before and so it is understandable that people have qualms about ‘playing God’ by shaping a life. Although some might argue that it is immoral to clone human beings, the truth is that it is unethical not to. Given that such technology has the potential to save millions upon millions of lives, not tapping into that industry would have dire consequences on the future. In this case, the ends more certainly justify the means.
The reasoning against the use and application of such technology, have mainly been established on common misconceptions regarding the psychological aspect of the process. For example, many still associate, [despite the profound evidence against the notion], a clone as being an exact mental and physical copy of the original organism. There isn’t, nor there has ever been, any scientific indication to support this theory. In terms of physical appearance however, yes, the newly produced organism will possess eerily similar features to that of the original. However, transfer of conceptual and emotional characteristics is not possible at this stage in time; the technology is far too inferior. In relation to therapeutic cloning, an extremely common reason used to oppose the idea, is the use of fertilised embryos in order to derive stem cells. Many activists and religious leaders believe that it is classified as eradicating potential life, and therefore is morally unacceptable. Scientists continue to discredit these claims, believing that the opposition’s reasoning, is a dogma that has outlived its
Imagine a world where everyone looked like you and was related to you as a sibling, cousin, or any form of relation, wouldn’t that be freaky? Although cloning is not an important issue presently, it could potentially replace sexual reproduction as our method of producing children. Cloning is a dangerous possibility because it could lead to an over-emphasis on the importance of the genotype, no guaranteed live births, and present risks to both the cloned child and surrogate mother. It also violates the biological parent-child relationship and can cause the destruction of the normal structure of a family. The cloning of the deceased is another problem with cloning because it displays the inability of the parents to accept the child’s death and does not ensure a successful procedure. Along with the risks, there are benefits to Human Reproductive Cloning. It allows couples who cannot have a baby otherwise to enjoy parenthood and have a child who is directly related to them. It also limits the risk of transmitting genetic diseases to the cloned child and the risk of genetic defects in the cloned child. Although the government has banned Human Reproductive Cloning, the issue will eventually come to the surface and force us to consider the 1st commandment of God, all men are equal in the eyes of god, but does this also include clones? That is the question that we must answer in the near future in order to resolve a controversy that has plagued us for many years.
In the essay, Cloning Reality: Brave New World by Wesley J. Smith, a skewed view of the effects of cloning is presented. Wesley feels that cloning will end the perception of human life as sacred and ruin the great diversity that exists today. He feels that cloning may in fact, end human society as we know it, and create a horrible place where humans are simply a resource. I disagree with Wesley because I think that the positive effects of controlled human cloning can greatly improve the quality of life for humans today, and that these benefits far outweigh the potential drawbacks that could occur if cloning was misused.
Human cloning destroys individuality and uniqueness. “What makes people unique is the fact that we have different genes and cloning would lose these important parts of our bodies makeup.” There would be less of a variety of people and everyone would be the same. This would not only be the good qualities, but also the bad that would pass on. Since clones and the original donor will look alike and have the same DNA, it would be nearly impossible to tell the difference. Overtime, they would lose their individuality and uniqueness. For example, say a crime was committed.
Human cloning is the process to produce a duplicate of a human being. It is the exact genetic copy and every single bit of their DNA is identical. If successful, cloning can have a lot of positive technological advancements that would help humanity. Possible benefits would be; replace love ones that have passed away, reproduce humans with special abilities and high intelligence such as Einstein and, regenerative medicine. Regenerative medicine is the process that would allow cloned organs to be used to replace human’s damaged organs. Splendid as it sounds, not one clone, human nor animal has risen to the challenge without complication whatsoever. As a fairy tale, cloning sounds too good to be true and the failure rate is tremendous. “Your success cannot be 1 or 2 percent. A 2 percent success rate is not ...
...cloning can be divided into two broad category: potential safety risk and moral problems, and these concerns overweigh its achievement.
Secondly, “the most the human race has to loose by playing around with cloning is that the genetic diversity would be lost (Andrea Castro, 2005).” Reducing the genetic differences will produce clones that are grossly overlarge, many animals will be born with genetic mutations, and there will be a higher “risk of disease transfer (Saskaschools, 2003). “A review of all the world's cloned animals suggests that every one of them is genetically and physically defective (Leake, 2002).” Mutations will be passed on to the younger generation because if a cloned species has a mutation in their DNA this mutation will be passed on. Cloning has been linked with diseases of ageing, arthritis and, cancer.
Cloning is a process by which genetically equal organisms are created with the same DNA. In simplest terms, clones are like twins born at different times. This procedure poses various dangers to society and humankind. One of the greatest threats this procedure creates is among
John A. Robertson’s article “Human Cloning and the Challenge of Regulation” raises three important reasons on why there shouldn’t be a ban on Human Cloning but that it should be regulated. Couples who are infertile might choose to clone one of the partners instead of using sperm, eggs, or embryo’s from anonymous donors. In conventional in vitro fertilization, doctors attempt to start with many ova, fertilize each with sperm and implant all of them in the woman's womb in the hope that one will result in pregnancy. (Robertson) But some women can only supply a single egg. Through the use of embryo cloning, that egg might be divisible into, say 8 zygotes for implanting. The chance of those women becoming pregnant would be much greater. (Kassirer) Secondly, it would benefit a couple at high risk of having offspring with a genetic disease choose weather to risk the birth of an affected child. (Robertson) Parents who are known to be at risk of passing a genetic defect to a child could make use of cloning. A fertilized ovum could be cloned, and the duplicate tested for the disease or disorder. If the clone were free of genetic defects, then the other clone would be as well. Then this could be implanted in the woman and allowed to mature to term. (Heyd) Thirdly, it would be used to obtain tissue or organs...
Human cloning is dangerous. It is estimated that between 95 and 98 percent of cloning experiments have failed (Genetics and Society). These downfalls to cloning are in the form of miscarriages and stillbirths (Genetics and Society). Cloned human beings also run the risk of having severe genetic abnormalities. Children cloned from adult DNA would, in a sense, already have “old” genes. These children’s main problem would be developing and growing old too quickly. This includes arthritis, appearance, and organ function. Since the chance of having a child with mental and physical problems is so much higher than that of a normally conceived child, cloning should be illegal.