Is Cloning for the Human Race Ever Justifiable?

1. What is Cloning?

1.1. Cloning is the production of multiple, identical offspring. A clone is an animal who is genetically identical to its donor "parent". This can be achieved using cells derived from a microscopic embryo, a fetus, or from an adult animal.

1.2. Cloning from adult animals was introduced to the public in 1997 when scientists announced the birth of Dolly, the first animal cloned in this way. There have now been hundreds of clones produced from skin cells taken from adult sheep, cattle, goats, pigs and mice.

1.3. The real key to cloning an adult animal is the ability to reprogram the skin cell nucleus and cause it to begin developing as if it was a newly fertilized egg.

2. New node

3. Ethical Concerns

3.1. Cloning has been a controversial topic as it conflicts with religious viewpoints. God is no longer seen as the sole creator of life and cloning has altered the natural evolution of life.

3.2. Just recently in May 2010, named Got, a spanish fighting bull was cloned. Got is identical to his father, named Vasito, a fighting bull who died in March after life as a stud.

3.3. In future, human cloning might become a reality and it is clearly not biblical and will arouse the discontent among many groups of people due to its conflicts with human ethics.

3.4. Mankind, here, is trying to play God. The amount of fetuses that have to die through experimentation in order to have a successful one is seen as unethical and simply unacceptable because potential lives are being destroyed.

3.5. Through cloning, organs can be made to order. However by doing this, Man is placing a price on the organ. The service to clone a human will also require a certain amount of money to be paid. By placing a monetary value to a human organ or a human life, it is degrading of the sacredness of the human life.

4. Plastic, Reconstructive and Cosmetic Surgery

4.1. With cloning, doctors will be able to manufacture bone, fat, connective tissue, or cartilage that matches the patients tissues exactly instead of using materials foreign to the body for such procedures. The leaking of silicone gel into their bodies or the other problems that occur with present day plastic surgery can very well be prevented.

4.2. Victims of terrible accidents that deform the face should now be able to have their features repaired with new, safer, technology. Limbs for amputees may also be able to be regenerated.

4.3. Cloning is justifiable in these cases, as it gives people a new lease of life while minimising the danger of obtaining it.

5. Health risks from mutation of genes

5.1. There is a possibility that the genes used from the adult will continue to age such that the genes in a newborn baby clone could be say, 30 years old or more on the day of birth.

5.2. Many attempts at animal cloning produced disfigured monsters with severe abnormalities. The first living thing to be cloned, Dolly the Sheep, died prematurely of severe lung disease in February 2003, and also suffered from arthritis at an early age, probably linked to the cloning process.

5.3. Even if human cloning can be successfully carried out in future, we will have to wait up to 20 years to be sure they are not going to have problems later. This makes it difficult to determine if cloning can really be a beneficial process to human life in the near future.

6. Abuse of Technology

6.1. In order to gain fame from scientific breakthroughs, scientists might resort to the abuse of cloning to reap benefits for themselves.

6.2. In early 2005, the research by South Korea's top human cloning scientist, Dr Hwang Woo-suk, was hailed as a breakthrough. However, it was only in December that year that his research was revealed to be a fake.

6.3. Furthermore, criminal syndicates might use this process of cloning for vice like selling cloned organs in the black market.

6.4. A process that is supposed to be used for the betterment of mankind, cloning might become a tool to encourage people to commit vice.

7. Cure for Infertility

7.1. With cloning, infertile couples could have children. Current treatments for infertility, in terms of percentages, are not very successful. One estimate is that they are less than 10 percent successful. Cloning will offer better chances than In-vitro Fertilisation and other alternatives.

7.2. Couples go through physically and emotionally painful procedures for a small chance of having children. Many couples run out of time and money without successfully having children. Human cloning could make it possible for many more infertile couples to have children than ever before possible, hence making it justifiable.

8. Cures for life threathening diseases and organ failure

8.1. Should people develop organ failure and other life threathening diseases, cloning would be able to enable doctors an alternative to traditional methods. Organs which are grown from the patients very own DNA will allow rejection rates to be almost zero and this will also allow people to enjoy a better lease of life as a benefit of cloning.

8.2. Cloning might be able to battle diseases like liver and kidney failure, leukemia and cancer as there is a possibility of cloning livers, kidneys and bone marrows. This would greatly solve the problem of long waiting lists for organ transplants and put an end to the patients' suffering.

9. Genetic modification and engineering

9.1. Cloning gives parents the opportunity to choose what characteristics they want their children to have. For instance, the parents want their child to have Albert Einstein’s IQ. The extraordinary athleticism of Michael Jordan.

9.2. Some scientists think human cloning is a good matter because human being can control their evolvement, so that we can ‘create’ more artists, athletes, and scientists. If we can choose in this way, we can enhance human’s achievement.

10. Legislation

10.1. It is never justifiable because cloning cannot be legislated. All scientific and technological advancement must be placed under legislative framework that subjects it to scrutiny and public opinion so as to reflect the society's opinion on the ethical boundaries of any such research. But, with so many renegade labs in our world today, it is impossible for us to enforce the standards once the knowledge is available. Proliferation of the knowledge can allow research considered to be unethical from being carried out, hence undermining the collective interest of society

10.2. E.G. Bush administration ban of cloning research was due in part of his belief that it will not be enforcible "The president said that anything short of a full ban would be unethical, and nearly impossible to enforce."