Human Cloning In Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go

For generations, the concept of human cloning has been cloaked by a theme of ethical atrocities. For example, in the novel Never Let Me Go, the author, Kazuo Ishiguro, explores the application of human cloning for medical purposes. Within this dystopian setting, human cloning has eradicated most lethal diseases and has extended the human life expectancy well beyond one hundred years. But, the problem lies within how these successes are achieved. The protagonists are clones of specific people and serve the purpose of donating organs when the original person needs them. This creates an ethical dilemma in which the value of human life is compromised. However, this is an exaggerated scenario of one form of human cloning and fails to properly represent the concept. Human cloning is the process of creating an offspring from the DNA of a patient. The DNA is inserted into an unfertilized egg of a woman creating an

There are rivals of human cloning that believe it goes against the morals they were raised with. Some think reproductive cloning can be considered unethical and against god’s “wishes” since the clones were created by man and their conception does not occur naturally. Viewing from the social aspects, organizations like The Americans to Ban Cloning (ABC) coalition reason that the creation of genetically superior beings will only further divide society. The genetically greater humans will be, theoretically, more intelligent and more attractive compared to normally conceived beings. Thus, the thought of normal means of reproduction becomes impractical. Others believe that genetically engineering a human would get rid of the concept of diversity since the same “perfect” genes would be used repeatedly. Subsequently, the creation of the “perfect” gene will require an extensive amount of time and experimentation. This will create an understanding that children are designed and replicated for certain