Arguments for and Against Cloning
For
There has been a breakthrough with human stem cells. Embryonic stem cells can be grown to produce organs or tissues to repair or replace damaged ones. For example skin for burn victims, brain cells for the brain damaged, spinal cord cells for quadriplegics and paraplegics (the paralyzed) and maybe even actual organs such as, hearts, lungs, livers, and kidneys could be produced. This could mean in some years that there is hope for millions of people on waiting lists for donor organs.
By combining this technology with human cloning technology it may even be possible to produce needed tissue for suffering people that will be free of rejection by their immune systems. Conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, diabetes, heart failure, degenerative joint disease, and other problems may be made curable if human cloning and its technology are not banned.
Why do we want these clones? Well scientist believes that it can be used for treatments for a range of crippling diseases, which can affect us all. There are many ways in which human cloning can benefit mankind. Here is a list of just a few:
Human cloning technology could be used to reverse heart attacks
Scientists believe that they may be able to treat heart attack victims by cloning their healthy heart cells and injecting them into the areas of the heart that have been damaged. Heart disease is the number one killer in the United States and several other industrialized countries. Cloning could dramatically decrease the millions that die per year from this fatal disease.
Infertility
With cloning, infertile couples could have children.
Despite getting a fair amount of publicity in the news current treatments for infertility, in terms of percentages, are not very successful. One estimate is that current infertility treatments are less than 10 percent successful. 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.
Plastic, reconstructive, and cosmetic surgery
Because of human cloning and its technology the days of silicone breast implants and other cosmetic procedures that may cause immune disease should soon be over. With the new technology, instead of using materials foreign to the body for such procedures, doctors will be able to manufacture bone, fat, connective tissue, or cartilage that matches the patient’s tissues exactly. Anyone will able to have their appearance altered to their satisfaction without the leaking of silicone gel into their bodies or the other problems that occur with present day plastic surgery. 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 be able to be regenerated.
Defective genes
The average person carries 8 defective genes inside them. These defective genes allow people to become sick when they would otherwise remain healthy. With human cloning and its technology it may be possible to ensure that we no longer suffer because of our defective genes.
Down's syndrome
Those women at high risk for Down's syndrome can avoid that risk by cloning. Embryos could be cloned, scanned and changed so that there are no traces of Down’s syndrome.
Leukemia
We should be able to clone the bone marrow for children and adults suffering from leukemia. This is expected to be one of the first benefits to come from cloning technology.
Cancer
We may learn how to switch cells on and off through cloning and thus be able to cure cancer. Scientists still do not know exactly how cells differentiate into specific kinds of tissue, nor to they understand why cancerous cells lose their differentiation. Cloning, at long last, may be the key to understanding differentiation and cancer.
Cystic fibrosis
We may be able to produce effective genetic therapy against cystic fibrosis. Scientists are already working on this problem.
Spinal cord injury
We may learn to grow nerves or the spinal cord back again when they are injured. Quadriplegics might be able to get out of their wheelchairs and walk again. Christopher Reeves, the man who played Superman, might be able to walk again.
Testing for genetic disease
Cloning technology can be used to test for and perhaps cure genetic diseases. Embryos can be scanned beforehand.
Bring back the extinct
Due to the technologies of cloning, we may be able to bring back extinct animals, such as the dodo or even, the dinosaurs. With the technologies of cloning we could also save endangered species of the world, such as the white tiger, or the Panda. Fanatics have also talked about bringing back Jesus.
The list is only a few of the things we can do with the technology of cloning. The suffering that can be relieved is outstanding. The new technology holds a great advance in medicine, why should another child die from leukemia when if the technology is allowed we should be able to cure it in a few years time.
Against
The painful process
The cloning process is still very imprecise technology. To produce Megan and Morag (earlier clones), 250 embryos were produced. Of these only 34 could be used. Five produced lambs but three of these lambs died immediately after birth because their internal organs were malformed. Over, the 250 that were produced 182 were disposed of. The very low success rate being 13.6%. As with Dolly, out of the 277 cell fusions only 29 cells began growing in culture. All 29 were implanted into ewes but only a single lamb was produced. This is a success rate of a mere 0.36%.
This also raised the important issue of this happening to humans?
One of the experimented mothers used in the production of Megan and Morag, had to have a caesarean purely because the lamb she was carrying was so huge. The lamb weighed 15lb where as the average weight for a welsh mountain lamb was 8lb.
Defects after Cloning
Cloned animals have been found to suffer from serious genetic defects – this discovery that could deliver a fatal blow to hopes of ever using cloning for human reproduction.
French scientists have, for the first time discovered new evidence, which show that cloning interferes with the normal function of genes in the human body. A valid factor that altogether decide whether cloning was to be made illegal was that after the animal or human had been cloned they could they could develop an illness that that would most definitely kill the animal and hopefully not, a human.
Professor Wilmut, who cloned Dolly the sheep, said that once the cloning process had completed, it could inherited problems, due to the different process they used, to clone Dolly.
Further more, one of the calves used in the Dolly experiment had developed normally for the first few weeks but later developed a rapid reduction in red blood cells, the calf later developed a very severe form of anemia, caused by incomplete development of its lymph glands.
Playing God
Most people believe that we were created by god but in the case of cloning somebody else in the world are creating life on earth. Many groups in the U.K believe that it is not natural for humans to be produced in the horrific process of cloning.
Births
Moreover, a significant amount of births are painful for the experiments sheep, especially because many embryos grow to an unusually large size. A proportion of the offspring die shortly after birth.
Police warn of illegal cloning
It is said that by 2020 cloning, may be an everyday thing in the world. Criminals will have clone after clone ruining the streets. It is also thought that there is an organized crime co-operation selling illegal body parts as well as genetically engineered goods.
Also by 2020, 95 % of the human body will not be original, but strangely be replaced parts. Cloning will enable parents to decide on the character, health and even looks of their child
Here is a quote from the independent:
‘ God alone is able to frame and make a living creature, fashion them and mould them to their uses ‘
What the law states on cloning
In February 1997 a report on the birth of Dolly was published called ‘Dolly’. This remarkable breakthrough reawakened public interest, and concern, about the implications for humans of cloning research.
On the day of the publication, the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee decided to conduct an inquiry into the issue. The Government position was made absolutely clear in the response by the Minister for Public Health to a Question in Parliament on 26 June 1997 when she said:
"We regard the deliberate cloning of human beings as ethically unacceptable. Under United Kingdom law, cloning of individual humans cannot take place whatever the origin of the material and whatever technique is used."
Among other things, the Report confirms the Government’s view that the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 was wholly sufficient to forbid human reproductive cloning in the United Kingdom.
In many other countries and states such as California, cloning has also been banned but not as harshly, as some exceptions were allowed. But furthermore George W. Bush is still consulting his decision.
Case Studies
Cloning
Dolly the sheep
In 1997 cloning became a household term, thanks to Ian Wilmut and colleagues of the Roslin Institute, near Edinburgh, who reported in February the first successful cloning of an adult mammal. The center of attention, a lamb named Dolly. No one could believe that adult mammals could not be cloned and ignited a debate concerning the many possible uses and misuses of mammalian cloning technology. The concept of cloning in mammals, even in humans, was nothing new. Naturally occurring genetic clones, or individuals genetically identical to one another, had long been recognized in the form of identical twins, triplets, and so on.
Unlike Dolly, however, such clones are resultant, from a single fertilized egg. Moreover, clones had been generated previously in the laboratory, but only from embryonic cells or from the adult cells of plants and "lower" animals such as frogs. Decades of attempts to clone mammals from existing adults had met with repeated failure, which led to the presumption that something special and irreversible must happen to the DNA of mammalian cells during the animal's development. Dolly remained alive and well long after her birth. She had a functional heart, liver, brain, and other organs, all derived genetically from the nuclear DNA of an adult mammary gland cell proved otherwise.
Megan and Morag were an earlier experiment with cloning. They were produced by growing an embryo. Dolly on the other hand was produced from a cell from the mammary gland (breast) of another sheep. In the process, the nuclei were removed from the cells taken from the mammary glands of two sheep. These then were placed in culture. Further on in process the embryos were then placed inside another sheep for it to grow. From then on Dolly was formed.
Designer baby
Adam Nash
On the recent technologies involving a process similar to cloning was the very recent production of Adam Nash.
On August 29th 2000, Adam Nash, the world's first true designer baby was born.
Adam had been conceived specifically for the sake of his 6-year-old sister, Molly, who has a rare form of anaemia and who would probably die within a year. After he was born, some of his blood was transfused into her to hopefully cure her condition.
Parents Lisa and Jack Nash had decided to go ahead with the controversial treatment after being told it offered the best hope for Molly. Doctors then created 15 embryos in the laboratory, and after extremely sophisticated testing, some were found to carry the same genetic disease as Molly, Fanconi's anaemia, and some would not produce a baby with the correct tissue type. In all, 13 embryos were discarded. Of the remaining two suitable, one was implanted into Mrs. Nash, and Adam was the result.
After Adam was born, doctors collected stem cells from blood in his umbilical cord, which were later transferred to his sister. The procedure was reported as being completely painless.
The Nashes, from Denver, Colorado, were very aware of the controversy surrounding their decision to try and save Molly's life in this way. Mrs Nash is reported as saying, "You cannot judge us unless you have been in our shoes. If someone has watched a child dying from a disease, and can say that they wouldn't do everything that they could to save that child, then fine. Unless you can say that, don't judge me".
Of course it hasn't stopped there.
On 23rd February 2002, British fertility clinics were given the go-ahead, by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, to create babies for the benefit of another person. In other words, it is now legal for children to be conceived because they are 'needed' for therapeutic purposes. This ruling came about because a couple, Raj and Shahana Hashmi, sought permission to screen embryos for a genetic match so that cells from the child's umbilical cord can be used to treat the couples' son who suffers from a rare genetic disorder.
Islamic Perspectives on Cloning
The Islamic views presented about cloning are quite ethical opinions in the matters of the religious laws of Muslims. Although ethical issues associated with assisted reproductive technologies, the subject of possible human cloning has not yet been discussed. The facts about cloning are just now emerging.
Let us begin with the teachings of the Qur'an. Firstly here is a quotation from the Quran on the issue of human interference in the workings of nature associated with reproduction. In Chapter 23, verse 12-14, it reads:
‘We created man of an removal of clay, then we set him, a drop in a safe quarters, then We created of the drop a clot, then We created of the clot a tissue, then We created of the tissue bones, then we covered the bones in flesh; thereafter We produced it as another creature. So blessed be God, the Best of creators ‘
Muslim analysts have drawn some important conclusions from this and other passages that describe the development of an embryo to a full human person. First, human creation is part of the divine that will determine the embryonic journey of a human creature. Second, it suggests that unnoticed life is possible at the later stage in biological development of the embryo when God says: "thereafter We produced him as another creature."
It raises questions whether foetus should be a legal person once it enters in the uterus in the earlier stage.
The basic decisions based on the Qur'an and the Tradition provides no generally accepted definition of the term `embryo' with which we are concerned in our thought today. A reasonable conclusion, originally from the Qur'an, suggests that as people in the act of God creating us, (God being the Best of the creators) human beings can actively slot in, furthering the overall well state of humanity by interfering in the works of nature, including the early stages of embryonic development, to improve human health.
Nevertheless, the Qur'an takes into account the problems of human arrogance this also takes on, the form of rejection of, God's frequent reminders to humanity, that God's binding laws are foremost in the nature and human beings cannot wilfully create, "unless God, the Lord of all Being, wills." (81:29)
This is what it read:
"The will of God" in the Qur'an has often been interpreted as the "processes of nature uninterfered with by human action." Hence, in Islam the human decisions of genes made possible by bio technical interference in the early stages of life, in order to improve the health of the foetus or cloning in the meaning of embryo splitting for the purpose of improving the chances of fertility for a married couple as regarded as an act of faith in the ultimate will of God as the Giver of all life.
To understand the ethical issues associated with cloning, you will need to know that the centre of the debate in Islam is going to be the question of the ways in which cloning might affect human relationships. Islam regards personal relationships as essential to human and religious life. In fact, the Prophet is reported to have said that nine-tenth of religion constitutes are to do with human relationships, whereas only one-tenth is God-human.
Since the George Washington University Medical Centre successfully duplicated, genetically defective human embryos in 1993, Muslims have raised questions about the misuse of human embryos beyond IVF implantation in terms of their impact upon the original relationship between man and woman. This indicates that there would be almost an agreement in Islamic rulings on therapeutic uses of cloning, as long as the family of the child remains religiously unblemished.
Muslims, like other people around the world, thinks the technology is abnormal. For Muslim people, no human action is possible without an intention and will.
In the recent history, it is quite reasonable for the Muslims, Christians and Jews, to fear political abuse of the reproduction technology through cloning. With its prominence on spiritual legality, Islam has refused to agree with the validity. The only valid claim to nobility in the Qur'an stems from being god fearing.
Personal Evaluation
My position on the issue
What would happen if we cloned a person? Would it be just like the real person? Would it have the same knowledge? Personality? Physical features? And most importantly, would it have a soul? Maybe it would have a different soul, or they'll share the same soul, or maybe it won't have a soul. Can it live without a soul? Only God can create life. I think by cloning, especially people, we (in a sense) become God. Able to create and destroy life, whenever we choose to. And just think of the cloned person. If by some miracle we can clone a person, and it lives. It will be locked up in a lab for the rest of its life. While scientists perform tests on it. In my opinion human cloning should be left alone.
I also think that human cloning is just another tool that will make it possible for some infertile couples to have the biological child they could not otherwise have and will better satisfy their reproductive preferences as well. But, Parents will be able to select genes for their kids with all sort of characterises, such as health, intelligence, athletic ability, beauty etc. In my opinion human cloning should be left along.
I don’t think that cloning should be band in all cases. As with the case of Dolly it didn’t really have a valid point to why a sheep should be cloned in the first place. I think that cloning should be allowed, but not to clone a whole human being, but only to clone parts, such as liver heart etc, because this helps millions of people around to world to get an exact match of kidney or lung, without it getting rejected by their immune systems. Cloning should be used in a good way, to fight diseases and save people’s lives not just to clone someone just to see if it worked.
I have come to this position, mainly due to the points raised in the section, for cloning. The section for cloning outlined a lot of things that cloning could fix in our society, if it was made legal in the U.K, why should another person die of cancer or, leukaemia, when we could save their lives with the great technologies of cloning.
Bibliography
Books
‘Cloning the issue – Volume 12’ By Craig Donnellan
Volume 13
Newspaper Cuttings
The Mail
The Independent
The Times
Websites
Search engines
ask.co.uk
lycos.co.uk
msn.co.uk
Newscientist.com
Cloning.org
