Ethical Issues in Cloning - Essay Example

March Ethical Issues in Cloning How it started Who ever thought of having the perfect replica of oneself that one can actually pull the act of being on two different places at the same time without being caught, or the odd fiction that one person can actually go to sleep and have another self do the work for him without any people having doubt as if the realization of the “surrogate” movie has already come to reality. Another related scenario is the cruel act of having another person take the place of another but that person is the exact replica. Have we thought of it as being a part of reality? Is it really possible or not? The possibility of having “another you” in this world or having two different persons with the same actual features similar to identical twin has been a vast subject of arguments since the dawn of human technology. Cloning, as people of the scientific world calls it, offers a breakthrough in human genome science and a chance to change the whole face of the history of human existence. Religion calls it dismay to God’s natural ways, the social norms got stormed with different issues and yet the society must decide whether to support its pursuance amidst the many issues it is faced. Man in his pursuit to never ending knowledge and discovery will stop at nothing especially in the discovery of the complexities of man’s very being that lead him to the point of making a human replica out of a person’s genes bypassing the natural ways. Imagine that the cloning of human beings succeed, what will happen next? Cloning, considered as a relatively recent phenomenon, derives its current name from antiquity. The Greek word “klwn” accounts for a the common term “twig” which was initially used as a term applied to early twentieth century botany, designating plant grafts. Then, by the 1970s, the word came to designate a viable human or animal generated from a single parent (UNESCO 6). A simpler definition of cloning according to the Genetic Learning Science Center is the creation of an organism that is an exact genetic copy of another meaning that every single bit of DNA is the same between the two as if having a duplicate. Over the last few years, cloning has come to mean any artificial, identical genetic copy of an existing life form imitating the natural cycle of producing identical twins— natures version and the first ever successful human clone. The success Though twinning is regarded as natural cloning, cloning in the very essence of its discovery is different from natural reproduction. Many organisms including human beings come from sexual reproduction, the process omitted in artificial cloning (Genetic Science Learning Center). Many cloning attempts have been made by various scientists since the works of Robert Briggs and Thomas King in 1952, until the time of Dolly, the world’s first cloned mammal in 1997 (UNESCO 8-9). The success of Dolly earned worldwide attention and opened the perspective of a new biomedical world, and Dolly became an international icon. After the international hit of the first ever successful mammal cloning, many more successful attempts came into realities which are related to discoveries in health, medicine and many more. Another remarkable cloning was the one made by a biotech company, PPL Therapeutics Inc. that produced a genetically transformed sheep named Polly that secretes human blood-clotting protein in her milk useful for treating haemophilia (UNESCO 10). Human Cloning: an ethical dilemma From the success of multiple cloning in animals especially in mammals, the possibility of cloning the world’s most successful mammal fired the imagination of the population. Different speculations, opinions, debates and studies form different sectors of the society plagued the cloning discussion. The issue of ethics has been debated involving scientists, legislators, religious leaders, philosophers and international organizations. Ian Wilmut, the author of the first successful mammal clone, argued that indeed cloning humans is unethical. Explaining in congress that according to experience, cloning a mammal involved high level of failure—of Wilmut’s 277 reconstructed embryos, only 79 were implanted and only one developed successfully. According to Wilmut doing similar experiments with human experiments would be totally unacceptable (UNESCO 11). This can be viewed by the religious sect as an act of mere killing. High failure rates and high morbidity rates from animal cloning strongly suggest its inapplicability to humans. Clone animals seem to suffer high deformity and disability rates (UNESCO 12). These risks are evidences that it is not morally or ethically right to bring a human clone to being, if successfully made, just to suffer from such painful diseases and deformity. Some experts have consequently hypothesized that cloned humans might need hip replacement surgery as an adolescent and might suffer senility by the age of 20 (UNESCO 12). The ethical implication of cloning humans is beyond its limitations. Even if cloning success comes with time many ethical questions are yet to be battled. UNESCO cited these ethical questions cloning will face beyond its success in the future: On what grounds could reproducing children by cloning be allowed or prohibited? Should cloning be used for sterile couples or for homosexual couples who want biological offspring? How would a child born by asexual reproduction experience life, as a unique individual or as a genetic “prisoner”? Is a cloned child simply a twin of its genetic donor, with a certain time lag? Should parents choose the traits of a future child, as is possible with cloning? Those and other such issues now preoccupy scientists and bioethicists who see in cloning procedures the potential to endanger human identity (UNESCO 11) Many countries have denied the pursuit of this breakthrough all based on the ethical and moral norms that human beings are somewhat bound to obey. Taking for example Japan’s Council for Science and Technology refusal to human cloning practice due to the view that medical applications using human cells obtained from cloning may lead to breeding human beings and violating human rights. Furthermore Japan concluded, which religious sector will definitely agree upon, that asexual reproduction through cloning bypasses the family concept of reproduction (UNESCO 13). The US President’s Council on Bioethics in a study in 2002 known as the “Human Cloning and Human Dignity,” observed that efforts to clone a human would be unethical due to the likelihood of harm it can cause to those involved. Cloning raises an issue between identity and individuality, the meaning of having children, the difference between procreation and manufacture, and the relationship between the generations (UNESCO12). This context leads to the idea of conflicts by altering the natural process of creation. Despite the many probable gain human beings can procure from the utilization of this medical breakthrough such as transplants from human embryonic stem cells, probable clinical study of diseases, fertilization issues, transplant innovations and many more still the morality and respect to life and dignity uphold internationally only proving that life in itself is a masterpiece and a breakthrough and no other discovery is worthy enough to take away life in any form. Would people have themselves cloned and have a reserve in time an organ is needed? Most would say yes. Would it change people’s mind if they have not been cloned but have a twin instead? Both are humans, both had equal chances at life but technology changed the way they should be viewed. Works Cited Genetic Science Learning Center. "What is Cloning?." Learn.Genetics. n.d. Web. 1 March 2012. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organizations (UNESCO). Human Cloning: ethical Issues. Paris: Place de Fontenoy, 2005. Print Read More