Human Cloning is Immoral

Ever since the first child was successfully conceived and born in 1978

through In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF), the question on everybody's mind

has been 'Just how far can we stretch the right to create and destroy

human life?'

In the 24 years since IVF's first success, a million IVF babies have

been born worldwide and the technique has become an accepted therapy.

Now, more than ever with progress in assisting in conception, there

has been a great interest in cloning humans. Humans have been cloned,

naturally of course. I am referring to identical twins. Outside of

that, no human has ever been artificially cloned. One attempt at

splitting an embryo in 1993 came very close but was not successful.

Both of the two ways of cloning; splitting an embryo and implanting

genetic cells into an egg, are hard to do, expensive and dangerous,

but offer endless possibilities in medical developments.

Although many scientists think cloning will someday be possible, many

also think it would be unethical to try.

Professor Severino Antinori invented ICSI (Intracystoplasmic Sperm

Injection); the single major breakthrough in the treatment of male

infertility, and his extension of IVF treatment to menopausal woman

resulted in the controversial motherhood of a 63-year-old Italian.

Lord Winston, the Labour peer and infertility specialist refers to

Antinori's progress towards human cloning by saying:

"He is nowhere near being in the position he says he is of being able

to successfully produce a healthy human clone. It is extraordinarily

dangerous, fantastically risky."

(www.observer.co.uk)

Professor Robert Edwards whose work with the la...

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...or factor when cloning humans.

Josephine Quintaville is a Pro-life campaigner and director of the

London-based Comment on Reproductive Ethnics (CORE), a pressure group

that opposes human cloning. She said:

"You could never perfect cloning on humans without experimenting on

humans, and that is something that the world has agreed should never

happen again after Nazi Germany."

(www.lifesite.net)

Cloning humans appears imminent. If not to be used in medical

research, or assist in bioengineering children, to help infertile

couples have a baby.

In my opinion, after weighing out the evidence and arguments both

supporting and opposing human cloning, I think it is immoral to create

life, especially to treat cloned humans as tools to 'assist' in

development even though they would be humans just like you and me.