However if human cloning were to become possible, it would introduce many benefits to the human population.
Infertility and Premature Death
One of these benefits would be to infertile couples currently using in vitro fertilisation. At the moment, these couples have to retrieve donor sperms as well as donor eggs. Human cloning would allow these infertile couples to have children who were biologically related to one parent. As well as this, human cloning would also allow homosexual couples to be able to have children who were biologically related to them and they would not have to adopt children. And human cloning would even make it possible for sole parents to have children who had the same DNA as them.
Another argument for cloning would be the fact that parents who had lost a child to a premature death would be able to have another child who would have the same genetic make up as the deceased child.
No Risk of Genetic Disease
Yet another benefit the cloning of humans would be for couples who had one person being a carrier of a genetic disease. Human cloning would allow these couples to be able to have children without the risk of their offspring developing the disorder. And also, parents with a child who was suffering from a critical illness would be able to using human cloning technology to have another child who would be a compatible transplant donor for the sick child.
Those who oppose human cloning claim that it would raise social and ethical issues like the psychological distress caused to the clone by finding that they are a copy of someone else and not a unique individual. However this fear may be unfounded because in 2003, Thomas Zwaka and James Thomson who are from the University of Wisconsin reported that they found a way to replace faulty genes in embryonic stem cells (ES cells) with healthy copies, using a precise method which could prevent the likelihood of a gene ending up in the wrong place and potentially causing problems. Human cloning could possibly allow this therapeutic gene to be sent to every cell in the body. It would work by firstly creating an ordinary embryo using IVF. ES cells would then be taken from the embryo and the faulty gene would be corrected with genetic engineering. The nucleus would be taken out from one of the corrected ES cells and transferred to an empty egg cell. The egg cell would then develop into an embryo and would finally be implanted in the womb of its mother. The resulting child would not have the faulty gene and though it would be a clone, it would be the clone of a new individual, not just a clone of its parents. The advantage of this is that a person who is a carrier of a faulty gene would have a way of having children that would guarantee the child not being a carrier of the faulty gene and this would dispel the ethical arguments of having a clone of the carrier.
Cloning to Cure Disease?
Human cloning doesn't just include cloning a whole human being. Cells could be taken from a person suffering from a disease and used to help cure the disease. For example a person could be suffering from macular degeneration, which is a disease which destroys vision. To help improve the person's eyesight, cells would be taken from the person and cloned to create healthy retinal tissue and finally, the person would be given a transplant of this tissue. In fact, a similar transplant was carried out successfully on Russell Turnbull who became partially blind after ammonia was squirted into his eye during an attack. The ammonia damaged the cornea (the clear membrane which covers the front of the eye) with severe scarring which resulted in stem cells which kept the cornea healthy being destroyed. Doctors from the North East England Stem Cell Institute in Newcastle took stem cells from Turnbull's healthy eye and grew it on a layer of amniotic tissue taken from amniotic sacs, which were donated by woman who had a Caesarean section. When the cells had covered the tissue, the tissue was then transplanted on Turnbull's damaged eye and two months later the membrane had broken down, allowing the healthy stem cells to repair the cornea. Six months later, eye tests showed that his vision had become nearly as good as it was before the attack.
More research on this type of cloning could allow breakthroughs in cures for several diseases.
Counter Arguments
People against human cloning may claim that clones are born with shorter telomeres than normally conceived animals. And because telomeres shorten as an animal ages, they think that this is the reason why some clones age prematurely and die earlier. However, there is evidence to disprove this theory because; in 2000 a Hawaiian team of scientists found that six generations of mice cloned in sequence, in fact aged like normal mice.6 Similarly, other scientists found that found that cloned cattle and mice had longer telomere lengths than normal, causing their cells to show other signs of youth and allowing them to have a longer lifespan compared with cells taken from naturally conceived cattle and mice. Both these sources show that cloning does not cause animals to age prematurely and the deaths of cloned animals may have been caused by other natural factors.
Another argument that those against cloning make is about the reduction of genetic diversity due to the production of genetically similar organisms. There are two arguments that counter this. Firstly, there is the likelihood of genetic diversity reduction because for this even to happen on the large scale those against cloning say, a very large amount of people would have to be cloned and this is unlikely because of the general distrust of cloning in the first place. 6
The second argument is that human clones wouldn’t be the exact copy of their donor anyway. This is because genes are affected by the environment in different ways to form the physical qualities of a person. An example of this is in nature with identical twins, though they may share the same genes, there are some differences in looks and personality between them. They develop at different rates, have different likes and dislikes and they die at different times, meaning that they aren’t truly a hundred percent identical. If identical twins were each brought up in different places, their interaction with their environment would affect them in different ways. Even from inside the womb, exposure from pregnancy hormones can have strong effects on developing babies. All this shows that having human clones would not reduce genetic diversity because clone’s genes aren’t just affected by their parent’s genes but also by the environment. So it would be very unlikely that genetic diversity would be reduced.
Arguments against Human Cloning
Existing cloning of animals is fraught with many developmental problems and the cloning itself isn't very exact, with it taking many tries before a clone is created. If human cloning became feasible, these very problems could arise.
Large Offspring Syndrome
One argument against cloning is the prevalence of "Large offspring syndrome" (LOS) in many clones, which several of my sources, for examples ‘Genetics for Dummies’, ‘Rough Guide to Cloning’ and ‘What are the Risks of Cloning’ from the University of Utah website; have referred to meaning that it is a phenomenon agreed on by most in the field of genetics . The clones tend to physically larger and at birth they have higher than average weights and body sizes which are larger than normal. Lots of the clones created from mammals like cows and sheep had to be delivered by caesarean because they were too large to be born naturally. This largeness of size is probably caused by the offspring staying in the womb longer than usual. Clones with LOS also tend to have abnormally large organs, which can lead to breathing and blood flow problems as well as other problems as well. Clones also tend to have very large placentas which may also have an impact on the offspring's large size. Even babies created using IVF can suffer from LOS, though this shows LOS probably results because of embryo manipulation. And because LOS doesn't always occur, it has hard for scientists to predict whether it will happen in any given clone. As well as this, even clones without LOS have developed kidney or brain malformations and impaired immune systems, which can go on to cause problems later on in their lives.1
Reliability of Cloning
Another argument against human cloning is the problem linked with the successfulness of current cloning. The amount of cloning attempts that eventually result in live births are very low. Most of the clone embryos expire almost at once because they never implant into the uterus of the gestation mother. Out of the embryos that do manage to implant and begin development, more than half of them die before birth; the deaths caused in many cases by a malformed placenta. This prevents the growing foetus from collecting enough oxygen and nutrition. 1
Other Problems with Cloning
And even if the clones do manage to be born alive, some of them die soon of organ failure. In fact, 95 to 97% of cloning efforts actually end in disaster. That data may be from 2001, but cloning more recently hasn't become much more successful than before, with data showing cloning success rates as low as 10%. These figures show that despite extensive research into cloning methods, its success haven’t improved by a lot and they also show that cloning isn’t very sustainable and its process seems very much hit and miss.
Then there are other clones that appear to be healthy for weeks or even months, then suddenly die from strange illnesses not known to occur in natural organisms. Research into this matter has revealed some clues into what could be causing these problems. Scientists have discovered that the process of cloning itself could cause subtle errors in the way the genes function. These errors may lead to the strange problems appearing in the clones. If humans were cloned, these problems could occur and even the great advances we are making in medicine would not be able to treat catastrophic illnesses which had never appeared before. According to embryologist Dr Susan Avery, human clones would suffer less pain if they were not alive.
All these problems may be down to errors that occur during the somatic cell nuclear transfer process, especially problems with the process in which particular mammalian genes are switched off, depending on whether the genes were inherited from the mother or father (Imprinting). In some genes, the one inherited from the mother is switched, whiles the one inherited from the father is switched off. In other genes, this occurs vice versa. The process in which the genes are ‘tagged’ to show whether they are inherited from the mother or the father, occur during maturation of the egg and sperm cells. This process may be damaged however in SCNT, because SCNT doesn’t go through the process of egg and sperm production.6
Yet another problem cloning causes is faster aging in the clone. As a cell divides, chromosomes in the cell are copied, but the ends of the chromosomes which are called telomeres aren't fully copied and end up getting shorter because of this. This shortening of telomeres is linked with aging because the older the animal, the shorter its telomeres are because the animal's cells have been dividing longer. Telomere shortening may cause problems for clones because they are created through somatic nuclear transfer which starts out with "aged" DNA. Dolly the sheep had shorter telomeres than normal, which meant her cells were aging faster than that of a normal sheep.1 If humans were cloned, this problem of the shortening telomere may occur and human clones may end living a shorter life span than that of an average human.
Genetic Diversity
One finally argument against human cloning is the problems it causes with genetic diversity. Genetic diversity is very important to establishing and maintaining the health and wellbeing of populations of organisms. Research has shown that populations of organisms that are genetically diverse are more resilient to problems like environmental stress and at resisting disease. Cloning would create a population of genetically similar organisms and therefore exposing all organisms to greater threats of disease. An example of this in plants would be genetically identical crops that end up catching the same disease and this could then endanger food supplies. While sceptics may think this doesn't likely, efforts are already underway to archive genetically diverse strains of plants, so that unique genetic characteristics, like disease resistance aren't lost.
Counter Arguments
People who support human cloning, may say that it would provide those for example, who are infertile which the chance to have children who have their genetic information. However, not only does reproductive cloning as of now, create danger for the clone, it also creates danger for the mother who will be carrying the clone. Firstly, reproductive cloning needs egg cells from female animals and these animals have to be treated with large doses of fertility drugs so that ovulation can be stimulated. These drugs place enormous stress on the female’s system and some scientific studies seem to imply that these drugs expose female animals to an increased risk of ovarian cancer. Likewise, female animals are put in more danger as their eggs are surgically removed from them. Though they are put under anaesthesia, they still experience some pain.1
In relation to human cloning, if it ever became possible, something similar to this may occur because lots of eggs would need to be taken since the outcome of one being successfully cloned and born is very low. Women donors being given fertility drugs to produce eggs would be putting themselves in a painful procedure which would also be likely to have danger in the long term.
Conclusion
Looking at the arguments and evidence provided by both sides of the cloning debate, I believe that human cloning if it were possible, should not be allowed to happen. Firstly, as animal cloning has shown, there are many problems with cloning that scientists have as of yet not been able to eradicate. Animal clones end up suffering from a large variety of problems, some of them being heart malformations, high blood pressure, kidney defects, impaired immunities, liver disorders and deformed body parts. They could even have diabetes and may suffer from obesity.1 If these problems are plaguing animal clones, then it could be likely that human clones may end up suffering from these health problems. As well as this, human clones could end up having a shorter life span than average due to shortened telomeres. Do those supporting human cloning think it would be fair to subject human clones to such abnormalities, especially since there was no way they would be able to have a say in their conception?
Other people might think that the benefits of cloning outweigh the risks and they suggest that human clones would not have a shorter life span because some cloned mice and cattle were found with longer telomere lengths than in naturally conceived ones. This data shows that if humans were cloned, they could in fact have a longer lifespan than average humans.
However, Dolly the sheep was another cloned animal, but she turned out to have shorter telomeres than average. Even scientist up to now, have still not figured out why cloned animals show differences in telomere length.2
Then there are the issues of ethics that arise whenever the topic of human cloning is brought up. For example, from the very beginning of the cloning process, where it is very likely that most of the cloning attempts will kill the embryo, is it right to be condemning potentially human beings to death for the sake of one clone?1 The problem with this issue is how far you put the line for what constitutes as a living thing. Some people may feel that the second an egg gets fertilised and begins to grow, it is a living thing and would find it wrong that these embryos are produced with the knowledge that many of them will die. Others may feel that the embryo doesn’t have nerve cells and a consciousness in the way that babies have, so embryos dying isn’t much of a cause for alarm.
However, there is a much harder dilemma about the clones as soon as they are born. From most of the sources I have used in this case study; I have seen the discussion of the many health problems that occur to clones. If human clones were created, many would most likely end up suffering from these ailments. Would we be denying the clones of a right that no human should have taken from by scientists, the right to live a healthy life? Wouldn’t it be better, to paraphrase from the quote made in the BBC article in source 13, for the clones if they weren’t born in the first place?
So it would be dangerous, unethical and not to mention unprofessional, for scientists to attempt to create human clones just because they might turn out to have longer telomeres than natural humans. Furthermore, claims by fertility expert Panayiotis Zavos that he made 14 cloned human embryos, have caused most mainstream fertility and cloning experts to dismiss the idea of human cloning through outrage about the blatant lack of ethics Zavos shows. Universally they agree that human cloning would be too dangerous to attempt and may cause harm to both the babies created and the mother involved. Cloning in animals has repeatedly shown that many of the embryos end up malformed or are abnormally oversized which poses risks.
If those experienced in the field are almost unanimous in deciding that human cloning is dangerous, and then I feel it would be better not to unleash these dangers by cloning humans.
However, if the benefits of human cloning did eventually outweigh the downsides, then I think that there should be some guidelines laid down so its system does not get abused. I feel that firstly, only couples who cannot have tried other avenues of having children, for example In vitro fertilisation, and have had these methods fail, could be allowed to have their children cloned from one of the parents. As well as this, if parents decide to create a clone for the so that they can have a suitable transplant donor for their sick child, this raises some ethical issues like the right to freedom of choice which has been shown is media and books, most memorably in the book ‘My Sister’s Keeper’ by Jodi Piccoult. As a way to tackle this, the children born as donors should be told of their purpose when they are old enough, and they, only they, can be given the choice whether they want to be a donor for their older sibling.
Finally, for those who wanted to do something like clone themselves for the sake of having their own copy, I feel this would be very ethically wrong. I think this because the clone would always have to live with the feeling that they aren’t really an individual but just a copy of someone else and the person cloned may end up seeing the clone as a younger version of themselves. To eradicate this, human cloning would have to be very fine tuned so that slight changes could be made to the clone’s genes, to make the clone another individual who could exist on their own and not just be a carbon copy of somebody else.
Bibliography
RODDEN ROBINSON, T. 2005. Cloning: There'll Never Be Another You. In: E. Rea, ed. Genetics for Dummies. Indiana: Wiley Publishing, pp 299-312
Cloning Fact Sheet, 2009 http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/cloning.shtml [Accessed 2 February 2010]
NOWAK, R., 2008. Rare Species Could be Frozen for Future Cloning. New Scientist. [Online], (2681). Available at: [Accessed 3 February 2010]
RODDEN ROBINSON, T. 2005. The Genetics of Cancer. In: E. Rea, ed. Genetics for Dummies. Indiana: Wiley Publishing, pp 203-220
TAYLOR, R., 2005. Therapeutic Cloning: Will it Work? [Online]. Mary meets Dolly. Available at: [Accessed 10 February 2010]
BUXTON, J., and TURNEY J., 2007. Cloning. In: M. Milton, ed. The Rough guide to Genes and Cloning. London: Rough Guides, Penguin Books ltd, pp 206-220
WILMUT, I., 2004. The Moral Imperative for Human Cloning. New Scientist. [online], (2435). Available at: [Accessed 20 February 2010]
NASH, J.M., 1998. The Case for Cloning [online]. Time Magazine. Available at: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,987793,00.html?internalid=ACA [Accessed 20 June 2010]
SAMPLE, I., 2009. Stem Cell Treatment Restores Sight to Partially Blind Man [online]. London: Guardian. Available at: [Accessed 20 February 2010]
What are the Risks of Cloning?, 2010. [online]. The University of Utah. Available at: [Accessed 21 February 2010]
Weiss, R., 2001. Human Cloning Bid Stirs Experts' Anger. [online]. Washington: Washington Post. Available at: [Accessed 21 February 2010]
Panarance, M, et al., 2007. How healthy are clones and their progeny: 5 years of field experience. Theriogenology, Vol. 67, 142-151.
Cloning the First Human, 2001. [online]. BBC Science & Nature. Available at: [Accessed 20 February 2010]
Cloning, 2009. [Online] National Library of Medicine. Available at: [Accessed 3 February 2010]
ALDHOUS, P., 2008. Therapeutic Cloning Used to Treat Brain Disease. New Scientist. [Online], Available at: [Accessed 3 February 2010]
NOWAK, R., 2008. Cloning 'Resurrects' Long Dead Mice. New Scientist. [Online], Available at: [Accessed 3 February 2010]
Cloning, 2009. [online]. National Human Genome Research Institute. Available at: [Accessed February 10 2010]
Figure 1: [online]. Available at: [ Accessed February 9 2010]
Figure 2: [online]. Available at: [Accessed February 10 2010]
Figure 3: [online]. Available at:
[Accessed February 10 2010]
Figure 4:
[online]. Available at: [Accessed February 10 2010]
Arguments against Human Cloning, 2009. [online].Genetically Modified Food and Organisms. Available at: [Accessed February 11 2010]
Reliability of sources
Source 1: Genetics for Dummies: ‘Cloning, there’ll never be another you’
I used this source several times in the case study; firstly to discuss the first animal clone created, to describe the process of reproductive cloning and finally to describe some of the problems associated with reproductive cloning.
This source is reasonably reliable because firstly, it is a published text book which has the purpose of introducing the reader to genetics and its main topics of interest. The author has also studied at ‘The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’, which is regarded as one of the top twenty five universities for research. The author also holds post doctorate training in genetics, which means that she is relatively experienced in the field. As well as this, she is an assistant research professor in the Department of fisheries and wildlife at Oregon state university where she conducts research like using genetics to compare the evolution of tropical and temperate birds. Her scientific explanations have some credence in the science world, for example what she writes about the problem associated with cloning, has been repeated similarly is some of my sources like The Rough Guide to Genes and Cloning, Cloning fact sheet on Genome.gov and the ‘What are the Risks of Cloning’ article by the University of Utah. However, I cannot know for sure that all her explanations are correct because she is not a widely recognised scientist and certainly not a recognised expert in her field.
However, I still decided to use this source because the information it presented was backed up by several of my sources as stated above.
Source 2: Human Genome Project Information: Cloning Fact Sheet
The fact sheet is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science and the Office of Biological and Environmental Research. This gives is some validity because it has been sponsored by governmental agencies and also published in accordance with the U.S Department of Energy, Office of Science’s human genome project, which has lasted 16 years. The DOE has a reputation for sponsoring the most basic and applied scientific research than any other United States federal agency. All this means that the article’s affiliation with a government agency makes it quite reliable. However, the authors of the articles are not mentioned, so to make sure the data was reliable, I cross checked it with some of my other sources.
Source 3: New Scientist: ‘Rare Species could be frozen for future cloning’
This article has some reliability because; firstly it was published in New Scientist, which is a well known scientific magazine. The author herself, has a PhD in reproductive biology, which has some links with genetics and she is the Australasian editor of the magazine. As well as this, the author explains in the source, the science behind the experiment being carried out and how its technique was built on an earlier technique created by the scientist. This technique was published in a science journal called nature.
Source 4: Genetics for Dummies: ‘The Genetics of Cancer’
(Reliability discussed in source 1)
Source 5: Therapeutic Cloning: Will it work?
The reliability of the source may be limited by the fact that it is in fact from the website of an individual, which means that the scientific evidence and arguments may be biased. However the author, Rebecca Taylor, works in molecular biology as a clinical laboratory specialist and this shows she has some experience in the field of genetics because the study of molecular biology overlaps with that of genetics. In her explanation of therapeutic cloning, she has a diagram to accompany the explanation. But another factor that could count against the reliability of the source is that the author is a practicing catholic and her religion’s strong views on issues like cloning. This causes her to be biased when she is talking about such topic and she sometimes brings her religion directly into the text, for example on another article on her site 'Cloning 101' she writes 'they create human beings asexually, not sexually as God intended'
I decided to use some of this source in my text however. I used the author's explanation of therapeutic cloning because it was explained in a scientific way and looking at other explanations in the books I looked at and internet articles, it did not contain any bias.
Source 6: The Rough Guide to Genes and Cloning
I used this source in my case study to talk about the benefits the cloning of humans would bring. This source has some reliability because it is similar to a science textbook and its aim is to introduce its audience to issues in cloning and genetics. It is written by Jess Buxton, who is a geneticist and science writer, and by Jon Turney, who is a science writer and lectuerer with degrees biochemistry and history of science. Though the writers are not actually scientists working in the field, they use studies and scientific explanantions to back up their points and this is why I decided to use this source in my case study.
Source 7: New Scientist: 'The Moral Imperative for Human Cloning'
I used this source in one argument for cloning, where I discussed an alternative, scientific technique of human reproductive cloning that could be used so that social and ethical issues about the clone being the genetic material of someone else could be dispelled.
This source is has some reliability because firstly it is another article from the science magazine New Scientist. As well as this, the author of the article has a PhD in research and is also credited with being involved in the creation of Dolly the sheep. This makes him a well known and recognized expert in this field because Dolly the sheep was the first successful mammal clone. The science technique discussed in this article is one used by two professional scientists and I decided to include this in my argument because I felt it had a basis since the science was published in a science journal (Zwaka, T. P. and Thomson, J. A. (2003). Homologous recombination in human embryonic stem cells. Nat Biotechnol 21, 319-21.)
However I am aware that because the scientists' article was published in 2003 and this case study was written in 2010, the scientific technique may be outdated. But since it was published less than ten years ago, I feel that is not too long for it not to have some validity.
Source 8: Time Magazine: The Case for Cloning
I used this source to begin an argument for cloning about how retinal tissue could be cloned to help improve someone's eyesight if they were suffering from a degenerative eye disease.
This source has some reasonable reliability because it was posted on Times Magazine, an American magazine which is what would be seen as quality media. The article was written by a science journalist, though the author is not a professional scientist working in the field of genetics, so this may detract from the source's reliability. As well as this, the source was published 12 years ago in 1998 and the science discussed in it could be out of date or disproved. But I did use this source in my case study because another source discussed a similar scientific technique that had been used in 2009 and had been successful.
Source 9: The Guardian: Stem Cell Treatment Restores Sight to Partially Blind Man
This source was about a successful treatment and was used to back up a argument for cloning.
The article was published in the Guardian newspaper which has some reliability because it is high quality British newspaper. I also felt the source was reliable because it included details of a study which was carried out on other patients apart from the one patient described in the article (US Journal Stem Cells: Successful Clinical Implementation of Corneal Epithelial Stem Cell Therapy for Treatment of Unilateral Limbal Stem Cell Deficiency). Although those who had severely impaired eyesight and only had a small improvement in their eyesight, there were others who full regained their eyesight, This showed that the study had some success, which is why I included the science behind it in my case study and it was also published in a science journal.
Source 10: What are the risks of Cloning?
This source was used in my case study for a counter argument against a point made in a argument against cloning. The source was from an educational article on the website for the University of Utah. One thing that counts against its reliability is the fact there is nothing to say who authored the article so it could have been posted by anyone but since it is a website created by a university it is likely to be by someone from the staff or a student. However I did use this source in my case study because something of similar vein was also said in another of my sources, ‘The Rough Guid to Genes & Cloning’, on page 211.
Source 11: Washington Post: Human Cloning Bid Stirs Experts' Anger
Data from this source was used in my case study to make a point against human cloning. I think this source is quite reliable because it was published in the Washington Post which is a good quality newspaper akin to the Guardian or The Times in England. The author of the article has some experience in the field of biology as he took Bachelor of Science in it, though he is not a scientist but a journalist. I decided to use the article's data despite it being published 9 years ago since firstly, this data was retrieved from someone creating clones and also the data was backed up in the more recent 2007 article 'How healthy are clones and their progeny:5 years of field experience' that was published in the journal Theriogenology and showed comparable data to this source.
Source 12:Theriogenology: 'How healthy are clones and their progeny:5 years of field experience'
I used this source to back up another source which stated the limited effectiveness of reproductive cloning. I think this source is very reliable because it was published in a peer review journal which has a high reliability because it has been read and approved by other scientists and it also supported data from another source, which are the reasons why I included this source in my case study.
Source 13: BBC: Cloning the First Human
I used this source in one of my arguments against human cloning, discussing how the process of cloning itself, causes errors in the clone that could be fatal. I though this source had some reliability because firstly it was published from a documentary on BBC and this gives it some legitimacy because the BBC purpose is to be impartial and provide both points of view. I decided to use this source also because the source was paraphrased from a quote from an embryologist, Dr. Susan Avery and this makes it more reliable because she is a scientist working in a field that is part of genetics.