When the baby develops, you must ask yourself what relationship the baby has with its donors. The baby is not a brother, sister, son or daughter but a new form of biological relationship which can only be described as a clone. This subject, I find, is quite chilling.
'There are millions of human clones walking the face of the earth. We call them identical twins.' (Dr. Lee Silver, REMAKING EDEN: CLONING AND BEYOND IN A BRAVE NEW WORLD)
There are hundreds of sources debating the ethics and morals of human cloning. Banning the human cloning and experimentation has been one move by governments. There are many reasons supporting the cloning of humans and these include:
- Banning would cause controversy
Banning human cloning would cause arguments because there is no conclusion over the dangers of it. In society the burden of proof should be on those who wish to ban something.
- Cloning doesn’t hurt anyone
Cloning does not hurt the new human or the cell donor, so why should anyone be worried about the thought of cloning.
- It would hurt people who have lost a child or those who are infertile
To prohibit the chance of a family who have lost a child and cannot reproduce any longer is surely cruelty.
- It would give gays the chance to have biological children
Since reproduction is impossible between two members of the same sex, cloning would be the only way to have children biologically related to them.
- It is wrong to stand in the way of scientific progress
Standing in the way of scientific progress is being a Luddite. Further discoveries may not be found if a stop is put to one part of science.
- In case of a global disaster, it would save our species.
If a global disaster was to strike, our race may be wiped out. If we could preserve this by allowing cloning, the race could be saved.
(BBC. Religion & Ethics. 2002)
"If tomorrow someone could prove that you were a clone, would you think your life was worth less, that your loves and experiences were devalued? You would be the same person you always were. Nothing would be different simply because you were born from a 'previously experienced genome'". (Ronald Bailey. Send in the Clones. 1999)
There are also many reasons why people think that human cloning should be banned. These include:
- The cloning process is too risky
There is virtually universal agreement that it is not at present (2002) safe to use cloning techniques in human beings. Many people would go further and say that human cloning would amount to performing unethical experiments on people.
- It is just a horrible idea
People think of human cloning as being unethical and immoral and cannot believe that the process of experiments is continuing.
'Cloning and the reprogramming of DNA is the first serious step in becoming one with God.'
(Dr Richard Seed on National Public Radio, Jan 1998)
Many people believe that God decided the way in which we reproduced and how babies should be created. Human cloning goes against this belief.
- Relationship difficulties and problems
A clone’s parent is actually also their biological twin. The grandparents of the clone baby are genetically the parents as their genetic code is identical to the donor – their parent. These kinship problems are confusing and seem very odd indeed.
(BBC. Religion & Ethics. 2002)
'At this time, the significant risks to the foetus and physical well being of a child created by somatic cell nuclear transplantation cloning outweigh arguably beneficial uses of the technique.' (National Bioethics Advisory Commission USA)
No matter how hard our governments try to ban human cloning, there will always be a market for the trade and a consumer will always be present.
‘Can the market develop incentives for such cloning to actually take place?’ (Saint-Paul, Gilles – Economic Aspects of Human Cloning and Reprogenetics. Oct 2002)
If human cloning was to take place on a large scale, for example economic cloning, huge long-run consequences would be inevitable. The chosen humans to be cloned will be of top ability and high skill therefore supplying the companies with the best employees. Due to this, the lower end of humans i.e. the less efficient ones, will be eventually wiped out from employment and will find it almost impossible to compete against the ‘elite’.
