According to Colvin, a writer for the Humanist magazine, if human cloning was to be successful, “… human biodiversity will be diminished and human evolution will cease.” Imagine if everyone looked the same, acted the same, and reproduced the same – evolution in the human race would come to a stop. With little genetic diversity, humans will become susceptible to the same diseases and pests, meaning that an epidemic to a disease in which humans have low resistance could decimate the entire population. In addition, it could also lead to inbreeding among genetically similar or identical individuals, which could result in a further reduction of genetic diversity and a higher incidence of birth defects. Severe genetic abnormalities have also been commonly reported in cloned beings, which makes the process extremely dangerous and unpredictable. At least 95% of mammalian cloning experiments have resulted in failures from miscarriages, stillbirths, and life-threatening anomalies, leading some experts to believe that no clone can be fully healthy. In addition, the clone would share genetic defects of the cloned. For example, children cloned from adult DNA would have many of the problems adults experience. The children’s main problem would be developing and growing old too quickly and encountering diseases and characteristics you start to develop in adulthood, such as appearance, and organ function. In fact, Dolly the sheep died prematurely of severe lung disease and also suffered from arthritis at an unexpected early age. Since the chance of having a child with mental and physical problems is so much higher than that of a normally conceived child, cloning should be illegal. In studies done on cows, 4 out of 12 birth mothers died. There is also a very high abnormality rate for the clone as well as a very high failure rate, which is shown in the cloning of Dolly. Dolly, the sheep that was cloned in 1996, was one of over 200 sheep embryos. Hers was the only embryo that survived and the rest died or were thrown away. Imagine if the failure rate is that high when we start to clone humans. More than 200 embryos, the start of 200 human beings, would die for the sake of just one single embryo. Even if you had a few successful embryos, miscarriages have been unmistakably common in animal tests. Which brings to question, if someone could not become pregnant, would it not seem much more rational to choose to adopt and be guaranteed a healthy, normal child rather than spend this US $100,000 to clone a child that could possibly have defects? This technique cannot be developed without putting the physical safety of the clones and the women who bear them at grave risk. At the moment, human cloning is too dangerous at this present time for scientists and doctors to be able to clone humans effectively. Cloning technology is also at risk of being abused by many clients with the resulting possibility of reducing the value of life.
To allow human cloning creates a world where we can buy life with money. Acknowledging the inevitable popularity this technology would achieve, it is endangered of being abused. Reproductive cloning would embed the idea that children, and people in general are nothing more than objects that can be designed and manufactured to possess specific characteristics. Thus the value of life would decline since it is difficult to respect things we can access and create easily. In addition, many women who suffer from complications, which prohibit successful child bearing, are likely to try to find a suitable surrogate mother and embryo. Considering the common situations that could lead to desperation, a black market for embryos could erupt. Furthermore, women who just do not like the discomforts of pregnancy might also abuse this technology. At this point, human cloning would no longer be developed especially for infertile people but for lazy women as well. There are also many powerful leaders in each generation that will seek to abuse this technology for their own purposes. Imagine what Hitler would have done in the 1940s, had cloning technology been available. Perhaps he would have created an unstoppable Aryan “designer army,” made of identically enhanced individuals with great physical strength and artificial immunity to many diseases as well as the capability to endure extreme physical hardship and destroy whole societies and races. Better yet, imagine the extremities of the genocides two Hitlers would have been able to produce if personality and aptitudes could truly be passed on through genetics.
For many pro-cloning advocates, they pose the argument of how talents being issued and received by humans through genetics could benefit our society. Through intensive research, it has been reported that there is a promising possibility that cloning a musically talented adult will result in a musically talented cloned child. However, this argument only goes so far as to assume that all cloned people will enrich our society with respectable qualities and righteous intentions. If we were to accept the fact that qualities could indeed be passed through genetics, there is also a huge possibility of cloning a dictator or a criminal, which could pose a threat to the entire society. Since we can’t amount for the number of criminals waiting for the announcement of successful cloning technology, we must consider the posing question. Would our society benefit from one talented musician and a gross of tyrants with the capability of destroying our world, (such as Hitler and Stalin) or none of either?
Not only is the cloning process dangerous to the clone, and birth mother, it would be a violation of the clones rights to its own genetic identity and individuality, and we would risk reducing the value of life, taking away individuality from our society, and destroying the social system humans have long developed. By permitting human cloning, a whole gamut of problems would occur. The research of human cloning would certainly help infertility, however preserving the value of our lives and individuality, are far more important than helping a minor number of people fulfill their dreams. For these reasons, the development of human cloning should cease. As former president Bill Clinton once said, “Each human life is unique, born of a miracle that reaches beyond laboratory science. I believe we must respect this profound gift and resist the temptation to replicate ourselves.”
