Cloning Case

Cloning

Jeremy Tan

Eng101

Marybeth Nipp

1/22/2011

Cloning

In today's culture, science and technology are just part and parcel of our daily life. New advancements in specialized fields put us in awe but at the same time no longer surprise us. New research has been shown to be able to regenerate thumbs that have been unfortunately dismembered and new technology have enabled eye surgeons to be able to cure us of the once incurable degenerative eye diseases. Despite all this, is the conformity of mankind regarding new technologies moving too fast just to keep up with the advancement of science and technology? Should ethical dilemmas involving new and untouched topics involving cloning be tolerated? I don't believe so. The acceptance of cloning would only enhance mankind's "God-Syndrome", discrimination amongst our community, inevitable pain and suffering to clones, organ farming of clones and much more.

To begin with, cloning could might as well be called the artificial creation of life, the synthetic creation of a "Human being". Being able to shape their genetical traits and makeup, scientists are trying to play God. The controversy begins here, are they then a human with no soul, a human with a soul(just made differently), a clone with a soul, or a clone with no soul? Do we then own them because we gave them life, or are they our children? How would we then deem their lives as precious as ours if they are so easily replicable? They would either have no unique identity, or cause us to lose our human identity. They lack the uniqueness of luck and fate in which a random sperm fertilizes a random egg. The clones would not be special like us naturally produced humans. This might implicate severe complications in how we behave; our perception of life and the soul of another would be skewed, just like when Hitler was convinced that the Jews were inferior and not fit to live. That would not only be unacceptable but also immoral.

With this possibility of tainting where north lies on our moral compass, would the churches of many religions stand for it? Think of the social conflicts that might be implicated by legalizing cloning. Would Clones then be children of God like every other creature on the planet Earth or would they be just a human creation? Would we then be giving them life with no chance of heaven, creating to just to die in the end? In developing a relationship with these clones, would it not be devastating to think that there is no salvation for their souls if and when they die? Cloning might enrage people from all religions around the world and would be a major source of social conflict and anomie.

Consequently, even if you ignore religious aspects of the arguments, the moral issues in cloning fellow humans is cause enough to ban all forms of research or discussion in regards to cloning. These issues include organ farming, depraving the life of others, discrimination and other frightening out comes.

Cloning is said to be categorized into therapeutic and reproductive cloning. Both processes are similar but the outcomes are seemingly different. Reproductive cloning, as the name implicates, is the process in which a human being is cloned. Leaving that out of the picture for now, what about therapeutic cloning? Scientists and advocates of cloning and stem cell research say that with therapeutic cloning we are no longer "playing God". Therapeutic cloning only uses cloned and tricked embryos for research to save millions of people. So is therapeutic cloning ethical and acceptable? Lets explore this further.

There is no question that therapeutic cloning doesn't bring about life, that however, does not mean that it has no ethical concern. An embryo, regardless of what stage it is in, is still a life to be. Using embryos for research and therapeutic cloning is as good as depriving a child of his or her life. Therapeutic cloning also requires egg donors to undergo risky hormonal treatments and surgery, resulting in poor women selling their health, livelihood and future so that their financial needs can be taken care of. Is this not congruent to when illegal brothels smuggle immigrants into their country, get them hooked on drugs so that they are bound to whatever their captors want them to do? An increase in interest regarding therapeutic cloning would drive the need for such women and increase the incentives for poor women around the world to believe that it is alright to let their body undergo whatever risk, medication and changes just so they can get some easy money out of it. Therapeutic cloning is not just an act of killing unborn babies