The Opposition to Human Cloning: How Morality and Ethics Factor in

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Recommended: A dialogue about human cloning

The Opposition to Human Cloning: How Morality and Ethics Factor in

If a random individual were asked twenty years ago if he/she believed that science could clone an animal, most would have given a weird look and responded, “Are you kidding me?” However, that once crazy idea has now become a reality, and with this reality, has come debate after debate about the ethics and morality of cloning. Yet technology has not stopped with just the cloning of animals, but now many scientists are contemplating and are trying to find successful ways to clone human individuals. This idea of human cloning has fueled debate not just in the United States, but also with countries all over the world. I believe that it is not morally and ethically right to clone humans. Even though technology is constantly advancing, it is not reasonable to believe that human cloning is morally and ethically correct, due to the killing of human embryos, the unsafe process of cloning, and the resulting consequences of having deformed clones.

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. ...

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....” A World of Ideas. Ed. Lee Jacobus.

Boston: Bedford, 2002. 261-284.

“Hundreds want clones, scientists say.” 9 March 2002. MSNBC.com 2 April 2002

http://www.msnbc.com/news/541711.asp?cp1=1.

Jefferson, Thomas. “The Declaration of Independence.” A World of Ideas. Ed. Lee Jacobus. Boston: Bedford, 2002. 75-84.

Lee, Jean K. “Panel Discusses Ethical Issues of Cloning at Crowded Forum.”

The Tech v117 (9 May 1997) p12. 5 April 2002

http://the-tech.mit.edu/V117/N25/cloning.25n.html.

“Much Confusion Over Cloning: Many Americans Don’t Understand Science, Risks.”

2 April 2002. The Associated Press. 5 April 2002 http://www.msnbc.com/news/553785.asp.

Wachbroit, Robert. Genetic Encores: The Ethics of Human Cloning.

1999. Institute for Philosophy & Public Policy, U of Maryland. 5 April 2002

http://www.puaf.umd.edu/IPPP/Fall97Report/cloning.htm.

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