The Debate Over Cloning : Never Let Me Go

1062 Words3 Pages

A recent controversial topic that was discussed in class is the process of cloning. The novel Never Let Me Go is a literary work displaying cloning in England during the 1990’s. The clones are raised and nurtured until they are completely matured. After maturation, they are used for organ donations that are used for “normal” non-clone human beings. The outcomes from cloning taps into the morality and ethicality of human existence. Numerous questions are raised about the outcomes from cloning and some of the answers contradict the morals that humans have concerning what is means to live as a human being. “Cloning refers to asexual reproduction, reproduction without fertilization” (Harris 2). Due to recent advancements in cloning technologies, the foreign process of cloning human beings does not sound like science fiction but a glimpse into the reality of the future. Cloning does not only threaten humans’ previous way of classifying life but leaps into the realm of ethicality. While some may say that cloning human beings is unethical, the counter argument poses the benefits of cloning go way past the argued ethics of human existence. Even though there are benefits, the ethics of making an entire new human being from another one is unethical but some small scale cloning appears to meet ethical “guidelines” and provide benefits toward medicinal practice.
With the year now being 2016 and science technologies being more advanced than ever before, the human race can only keep obtaining more knowledge and grow better as a society. While there are global issues such as global warming, life expectancy, and world hunger, the well-being of the human race has continued to get better as the Earth spins round. The process of cloning has now em...

... middle of paper ...

...ard medicinal practice and does not threaten making a whole new human being. Reproductive cloning is ethically wrong and should be avoided at all costs even if society comes to desperate measures. However, therapeutic cloning delivers medicinal benefits that can save lives and increase medical knowledge to a whole new level. Even though therapeutic cloning comes at the cost of an embryo, the benefits that it reaps are hard to argue against. If there comes a day where cloning can be done without the cost of an embryo or the threat of creating a brand new human being from one person alone, life expectancy will jump through the roof and then society will have a brand new set of ethically issues to deal with. Until that day comes, cloning should be handled with extreme caution but approached enthusiastically because we never know when a scientific anomaly could occur.

Show More
Related

  • The Permissable Nature of Cloning Illustrated in Jennifer and Rachel by ” Lee M. Silver

    663 Words  | 2 Pages

    Silver’s argument illustrates to his audience that reproductive cloning deems permissible, but most people of today’s society frown upon reproductive cloning and don’t accept it. He believes that each individual has the right to whether or not they would want to participate in reproductive cloning because it is their reproductive right. However, those who participate in cloning run the risk of other’s imposing on their reproductive rights, but the risk would be worth it to have their own child.

    Read More

  • The Pros And Cons Of Therapeutic Cloning

    1154 Words  | 3 Pages

    Therapeutic cloning is the process whereby parts of a human body are grown independently from a body from STEM cells collected from embryos for the purpose of using these parts to replace dysfunctional ones in living humans. Therapeutic Cloning is an important contemporary issue as the technology required to conduct Therapeutic Cloning is coming, with cloning having been successfully conducted on Dolly the sheep. This process is controversial as in the process of collecting STEM cells from an embryo, the embryo will be killed. Many groups, institutions and religions see this as completely unacceptable, as they see the embryo as a human life. Whereas other groups believe that this is acceptable as they do not believe that the embryo is a human life, as well as the fact that this process will greatly benefit a large number of people. In this essay I will compare the view of Christianity who are against Therapeutic Cloning with Utilitarianism who are in favour of Therapeutic Cloning.

    Read More

  • Therapuetic Cloning

    1296 Words  | 3 Pages

    Children grow up watching movies such as Star Wars as well as Gattaca that contain the idea of cloning which usually depicts that society is on the brink of war or something awful is in the midsts but, with todays technology the sci-fi nature of cloning is actually possible. The science of cloning obligates the scientific community to boil the subject down into the basic category of morality pertaining towards cloning both humans as well as animals. While therapeutic cloning does have its moral disagreements towards the use of using the stem cells of humans to medically benefit those with “incomplete” sets of DNA, the benefits of therapeutic cloning outweigh the disagreements indubitably due to the fact that it extends the quality of life for humans.

    Read More

  • The Injustice Of Cloning In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

    954 Words  | 2 Pages

    “Cloning represents a very clear, powerful, and immediate example in which we are in danger of turning procreation into manufacture.” (Kass) The concept of cloning continues to evoke debate, raising extensive ethical and moral controversy. As humans delve into the fields of science and technology, cloning, although once considered infeasible, could now become a reality. Although many see this advancement as the perfect solution to our modern dilemmas, from offering a potential cure for cancer, AIDS, and other irremediable diseases, its effects are easily forgotten. Cloning, especially when concerning humans, is not the direction we must pursue in enhancing our lives. It is impossible for us to predict its effects, it exhausts monetary funds, and it harshly abases humanity.

    Read More

  • The Cost of Human Cloning: A Threat to Individuality and Diversity

    700 Words  | 2 Pages

    Have we as a society come too far too fast? This is a very applicable question recently asked by senator Roger Bennett, from Michigan, before the Senate on the topic of human cloning. It is speculated that we as a human race have the technology to make a clone of any given human (Jackson 2). If this is done, at what cost is it done? If cloning is allowed it will come at the cost of misguided effort, the creation of a process known as gene selection, and loss of individuality and diversity.

    Read More

  • Morality of Cloning

    1537 Words  | 4 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Never Let Me Go Ethical Issues

    990 Words  | 2 Pages

    The film Never Let Me Go portrays a dystopian world where medicine has advanced to extend the average human lifespan to over a 100 years. However, this is done so by the creation of human clones that live to be mere organ donors for the ones who’ve fallen ill in society. As the film follows the tragic lives of clones named Kathy H, Tommy, and Ruth, it artistically poses a number of ethical questions that we currently wrestle with today. Questions around stem cell research and cloning will never have neat answers and the film doesn’t attempt to provide solutions as well. It rather aims to deliver to its audience a number of themes to walk away with and to fuel a start of a discussion.

    Read More

  • The Science of Cloning

    843 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The Impact of Human Cloning on the Family and Society

    2612 Words  | 6 Pages

    Imagine yourself in a society in which individuals with virtually incurable diseases could gain the essential organs and tissues that perfectly match those that are defected through the use of individual human reproductive cloning. In a perfect world, this could be seen as an ideal and effective solution to curing stifling biomedical diseases and a scarcity of available organs for donation. However, this approach in itself contains many bioethical flaws and even broader social implications of how we could potentially view human clones and integrate them into society. Throughout the focus of this paper, I will argue that the implementation of human reproductive cloning into healthcare practices would produce adverse effects upon family dynamic and society due to its negative ethical ramifications. Perhaps the most significant conception of family stems from a religious conception of assisted reproductive technologies and cloning and their impact on family dynamics with regard to its “unnatural” approach to procreation. Furthermore, the broader question of the ethical repercussions of human reproductive cloning calls to mind interesting ways in which we could potentially perceive and define individualism, what it means to be human and the right to reproduction, equality and self-creation in relation to our perception of family.

    Read More

  • The Cloning Debate

    1026 Words  | 3 Pages

    Not so far in the future, a young boy of the age of six, dying a heart-wrenching death, will only be able survive with a bone marrow transplant.  His parents will have searched near and far for a match, but none will come to their aid.  The only possible way that they can produce a perfect match for their son's bone marrow is to clone their son.  Unfortunately, at this time this topic is still being discussed and debated upon with the government.  Their only child that has been their treasure for six years might die.  A clone of their son becomes their apple of aspiration to keep the treasure from being buried.

    Read More

  • Reasons to Ban Cloning

    591 Words  | 2 Pages

    Last of all, Cloning is not ethical, many religious groups look down upon cloning and think it’s not proper because they think it’s like playing God. Many scientists were mainly thinking about cloning animals and, most likely, humans in the future to harvest their organs and then kill them. “Who would actually like to be harvested and killed for their organs?” “Human cloning exploits human beings for our own self-gratification (Dodson, 2003).” A person paying enough money could get a corrupt scientist to clone anybody they wanted, like movie stars, music stars, athletes, etc (Andrea Castro 2005),” whether it be our desire for new medical treatments or our desire to have children on our own genetic terms (Dodson, 2003).

    Read More

  • Never Let Me Go Dehumanization Essay

    1048 Words  | 3 Pages

    Some claim that so called reproductive cloning and cloning for biomedical research can lead to serious abnormalities and birth defects(Sandel, 241). The defenders of liberal eugenics argue that parents should be free to enhance the genetic traits of their children for the sake of improving their life prospects(Agar 1999). The division among the people on skeptics and enthusiasts of cloning somehow create an atmosphere of taboo around the topic. In Ishiguro’s dystopia, technology is so well developed that cloning finally becomes a reality. All moral dilemmas have been denied and no one cares anymore about the fate of those who became organ donors.

    Read More

  • Human Cloning

    1801 Words  | 4 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • Clones Are Human: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

    882 Words  | 2 Pages

    "Human Cloning and Human Dignity: An Ethical Inquiry." The President's Council on Bioethics Washington, D.C. N.p., July-Aug. 2002. Web.

    Read More

  • Human Cloning Should be Illegal

    573 Words  | 2 Pages

    Human cloning is also unethical. Cloning, especially therapeutic cloning, requires the use of human embryos. Using these embryos would mean killing unborn children. Therapeutic cloning begins by removing the stem cells from an embryo (Human Cloning). The stem cells are used to grow bone, nerve, and muscle tissue. In the process of therapeutic cloning, an embryo, or a baby in the early stages of development, is taken and parts of it are grown to develop parts of the body including organs and limbs (Human Cloning). Removing these stem cells would kill the embryo. The embryo, which would result in a child if left in the mother’s womb, is separated into parts, which are used for science.

    Read More

More about The Debate Over Cloning : Never Let Me Go

Open Document