Technology
is growing very fast from days to days and now, even cloning is possible in our
generation by the improvement of technology. It is not a new concept for
cloning; the idea of cloning has been exist for quite a long time ago.
According to biology online dictionary, cloning is the process of creating an
exact copy of a biological unit (e.g. a DNA sequence, cell, or organism) from
which it was derived, especially by way of biotechnological methods. Cloning
humans was ban by the law since 1997, even though, some people are opposed with
this law as they think that cloning humans is the key to everlasting life. In
other word to this opinion, the process of cloning people is a means of access
to life endless existence interrupted by death. There are a lot of discussions
about cloning humans whether it should be allowed or not. Below, I will summarize
all the facts and opinions that support cloning and then the same against
cloning. Finally, I will share about my personal’s view about human cloning.
To
begin with the supportive side, firstly, cloning human allows lesbians and gay
men to have the possibility to produce their own children. Normally, lesbians
need to use donor sperm in order to have a child, while gay man need genes
derived from an egg donor too. Gay men and lesbians have expressed a special
interest in reproductive cloning because of the discrimination which they have
experienced in their efforts to have and rear children ("Reproductive
Human Cloning," 2011). These two groups of people will be very happy if
cloning humans is allowed as they can have their own children without the need
of help from other people. The opponents to cloning humans encounter with this
point by saying that it would be impossible to allow reproductive cloning for
lesbians and gay men as this will lead to increase the amount of lesbians and
gay men in our society largely ("Reproductive Human Cloning," 2011). In this way, there will be more and more of
lesbians and gay men in our society due to the reason that lesbians and gay men
will likely to clone their children to be lesbian or gay as well. It is better
for us to keep the amount of lesbians and gay men in a low rate; even we do not
mean to discriminate for lesbians or gay men.
Supporters also claimed that cloning humans could allow parents of a
child who has died to have their lost one again ("Reproductive Human
Cloning," 2011). People usually want their loves back and
cloning is maybe the only way that can bring their loves one back into this
world again. Cloning baby will discharge the suffering that the parents had
after the death of their child and the feeling of losing their loves one will
soon recover. Opponents opposed to this idea by suggesting that replacing the
deceased child by cloning will degrades and dehumanizes the child ("Reproductive
Human Cloning," 2011). Throughout history, the parents who have lost the
child usually grieve and sympathy for their lost child. It seems that the parents
will not be able to give the real sadness to their love ones as he/she had
passed away if human cloning is allowed. In this respect, the cloning child
will come to replace them and soon after, they will forget the real thing about
what happened to their real child who actually already passed away. It is also
considered to look down the real children because his/her parents seem to not
giving the real grieving for their death at all. Followers of human cloning
explain that people have the right to choose whether to clone or not; we should
not harm people to clone as equal right is given to everyone. Some people are
not satisfied with cloning humans; they are very happy with the cloning human
laws, whereas, others are not happy with this law. As stated in law, everybody
have equal right, so to harm cloning humans is not showing that everybody have
equal right to do what they wants. In contrast, proponent stated that rights
are socially negotiated, and no right to clone has ever been established
("Reproductive cloning arguments," 2006). People are the ones who
create the law which includes the law of right; thus, they usually composed the
laws which supported by the majorities of people. Human cloning is opposed by
the majorities of people, so the legislation had passed the law to ban human
cloning and everybody must follow it. Life is sometimes unfair; we should deal
with it. The last comment that human cloning fan made is that cloning can
provide genetically related children for people who cannot be helped by other
fertility treatments ("Scientist prepares for," 1998). The ones who
cannot produce eggs or sperm would be beneficial from human cloning as they can
produce their own genetically related children as they wish. Professor Severino
Antinori, the world's leading fertility experts, suggested that cloning is a
good idea as it could help infertile couples to have a child ("Scientist
prepares for," 1998). The anti-cloning humans
pointed out that the number of men and women who do not produce eggs or sperm
at all is very small, and modern assisted-reproduction techniques has been
introduced to help those kind of people already ("Reproductive cloning
arguments," 2006). As a result, this kind of people had been greatly
reduced. To sum up, the opinions and facts support human cloning seem to be
very reasonable, but the counter arguments to those points seem to be prove
correct too.
Moving
into the opponents’ idea over human cloning, first, the opponents mentioned
that cloning humans would diminish the sense of uniqueness of an individual. People
will not get the beauty of individualism if we allowed human cloning
("Reproductive cloning arguments," 2006). In nature, people are born
with different personalities and traits; cloning will diminish some of the
personalities and traits of the human that created by the nature. We should
preserve something that happen naturally and should not make a major change
what is god mad to human at all. Fr.
Stanley Samuel Harakas said that "mixing human DNA with animal DNA would
be something more than ‘Playing God.’ It would be ‘Playing the Devil’.”
(Logston, 1999). The fan of cloning humans responded to this point by saying
that cloning could allow people to choose their desire personalities and traits;
only the good ones were likely to be choosen. A lot of people in this world do
not want to have something which is bad in their lives. If we had some
information about ourselves, perhaps we could sooner or better discovery who we
are (Smith, 1998). For example, if we know that our children can copy the
genes that cause diabetes from us, we can protect them to avoid having diabetes
like us in the future through using cloning technology to substitute the genes
of diabetes with the normal or good gene. Another point that oppose with human
cloning is that cloned children would unavoidably be raised "in the
shadow" of their nuclear donor, in a way that would strongly tend to
constrain individual psychological and social development ("Reproductive
cloning arguments," 2006). Some parents will not treat the clone child in
the same way as normal child and additionally, some parents will even not
paying attention to the clone child at all. It is hard to be adapted
psychologically with the cloning children. Supporters reacted with this point by
thinking that parents will learn to communicate and gradually start to provide
the real love to their clone children. Even though, there are some of the
nature children who were not love their parents as well, so cloning children
can be somewhat the same as nature children. Another main argument from
opponents is that human cloning is unsafe. Dr Harry Griffin, who worked on the
Dolly project, warned any attempt to clone a human would be inefficient and
unsafe ("Scientist prepares for," 1998). He continued that
“Inefficient because in Dolly's case we used 277 reconstructed eggs to produce
one successful pregnancy, collecting eggs from perhaps 40 donor ewes, and
unsafe because a good proportion of our pregnancies fail late in pregnancy and
we have had lambs that die soon after birth ("Scientist prepares
for," 1998).” Human cloning will likely to meet a lot of failures before
it gets successful in one day, so it is not good idea at all to try with it.
However, supporters claimed that Cloning techniques will eventually be
perfected in mammals and will then be suitable for human trials ("Reproductive
cloning arguments," 2006). A lot of mammals have been cloned successful,
even the failure results do exist often. Supporters believe that people will
develop the technology of cloning humans if it is allowed and all of the
cloning will be successful in the future.
Human cloning has been ban by the law, so there is no chance for the
development of human cloning technology. Thus, supporters also requested the
law to allow human cloning in order to develop this technology. The last
remarkable opinion made by opponents is if human cloning is permitted to happen
and becomes accepted, it is difficult to see how any other dangerous
applications of genetic engineering technology could be proscribed ("Reproductive
cloning arguments," 2006). There will be a lot of problems with genetic if
we allowed cloning humans as we could see cloning is very conflict as it mixes
together all the human genes by manmade. We do not really know whether there
are any effects or not by mixing human genes together by man-made which could
lead to create a new type of diseases or any other problems. On the other hand,
Human society can accept or reject any proposed technology on its own merits ("Reproductive
cloning arguments," 2006). People
can diminish any technology which harms to human and similarly, they have their
own choice to choose to practice any new type of technology again or not. If
any technology does not work really well, scientists will stop that kind of
technology by themselves. All of the arguments, which made by opponents, seem
to be acceptable. However, the opinions against those arguments were reasonable
too. Both opinions and facts that the opponents made are hard to judge whether
it is right or wrong like the supporters’ opinions and faces above too.
Cloning
humans displays the development and advancement of technology that we have
nowadays. Even though, it is really great to the majorities of us that the
technology is improving up to the level like nowadays, I am still oppose with
the idea of cloning humans as the key to everlasting life since I think that
people should be borne by nature and we should not have tried any other ways to
bring life into this world. We must obey to the natural law and by changing
something that created by nature can lead us to face with many problems. Furthermore,
cloning human will cost a lot of money before the technology can clone human
successfully without any failure results; thus, by banning human cloning is
also a good idea for me as it prevents people to spend millions of dollars in
doing research on cloning humans before the technology can do it successfully
on humans and it also erased all of arguments within the society about this
issue in the past. People should enjoy with the beauty that they got from
nature or god made.
To
sum up, human cloning gives both advantages and disadvantages to us. We do not
really know whether it affects us seriously or not if we allowed cloning
humans. Nevertheless, it was ban by the law since 1997. The beauty of human
cloning includes allowing lesbians and gay men to have the ability to produce
their own children, parents of a child who has died to have their lost one
again, giving people the right to choose whether to clone or not, and provide
genetically related children for people who cannot be helped by other fertility
treatments. In contrary, proponents be aware of human cloning by arguing that cloning
would diminish the sense of uniqueness of an individual, cloned children would
unavoidably be raised "in the shadow" of their nuclear donor, it is
unsafe for cloning humans, and it is difficult to see how any other dangerous
applications of genetic engineering technology could be proscribed if human
cloning is permitted or accepted. All the arguments made by both sides seem to
be acceptable and it is hard for us to judge whether which one is better. It is
up to each individual to decide whether cloning humans is the key to
everlasting life or not. Before making decision, you should ask yourself that
is human cloning which is manmade is better than god made and you are ware of
any outcomes which could create by cloning humans or not.
References
Answers
to all your biology questions .
(n.d.). Retrieved from:
Logston, A. (1999). The
ethics of human cloning. (Master's thesis, Saint Vincent
College)Retrieved
from: http://facweb.stvincent.edu/academics/religiousstu/writings/logston1.html
Reproductive cloning
arguments pro and con. (2006, may 15). Retrieved from:
http://www.geneticsandsociety.org/article.php?id=282
Scientist prepares for
human cloning. (1998, November 17). BBC. Retrieved from:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/216034.stm
Smith, S. (1998,
Febraury 26). All the reasons to clone human beings. Retrieved from:
Word counted: 2255
Mizuno Thay
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