Is Human Cloning Legal?

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Human cloning has not been legally used in humans because many people and experts are still discussing its effectiveness, worthiness and effect on humanity. Human cloning, also known as human genetic engineering, can be divided into two main types, which are therapeutic cloning, growing cloned tissue from individual, and reproductive cloning, genetically identical copy of an individual. Human cloning have drawn people’s attention because people are become more concerned about health problems and tried to find a methodology that can help them live longer and better; human cloning seems to be one of the possible choices. However, it is still being discussed its trade-off between benefits and risks. Despite medical benefits and advancement of knowledge, human cloning has a number of risks and should not be developed and utilized without a very strict control from the respective governments and international organizations.

Human cloning, or human genetic engineering, has several medical benefits for humanity. It might be able to solve the problem of organ shortage and can help prolong people’s life. According to the United Network of Organ Sharing (UNOS) (2008) cited in Clemmons (2009), there were 101,953 individuals in 2009 waiting for organ transplants, and 6,479 died while they were waiting for the organs. These numbers may be reduced by using human cloning in terms of therapeutic cloning, the harvest of embryonic stem cells from somatic cell nuclear transfer, in an organ transplant. Therapeutic cloning may become an increasingly successful method that can minimize the shortage of organ and increase the number of patients who can benefit from organ transplantation (Baird, 2002). Moreover, therapeutic cloning is also presumably he...

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... deflect people’s interest from human cloning. In reproductive cloning, it has not been accepted by society because it leads to a number of ethical concerns and it has a low probability of success. On the other hand, therapeutic cloning seems to have many essential benefits to humanity but its result is still unpredictable. Therefore, only therapeutic cloning should be partially developed and carefully utilized under governments and international organizations inspection. In order to confirm that it has not been abused or used for the wrong purpose and does not cause any harm to humanity. In addition, it should be tested on animals until the success rate is almost 100% before start testing on humans for safety reason. Lastly, human cloning in terms of therapeutic cloning should be regulated by an international law so there will have no loophole for the exploiters.

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