'Is the cloning of human cells useful to mankind?'

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Stage 2 Biology                Justin Chandler

Human Awareness Essay

‘Is the cloning of human cells useful to mankind?’

A clone is a group of genetically identical cells, or a group of organisms that are genetically identical. I believe the cloning of human cells to produce organs or even infants is inevitably going to happen. The cloning of human cells will become very beneficial to us in the future, but there are still the ethical matters of the process, which in my eyes will always be there. I believe at this stage the ethical matters far outweigh the potential advantages.

As it states on the world book website ‘Infertile couples who do not wish to adopt for instance, could use cloning to have children who are biologically related to them.’ Even this point would raise concerns such as which parents would be eligible or would gay couples be allowed to clone babies for themselves, another issue is if all these people have their own babies who would adopt orphans with no parents. Another possible benefit that could be achieved from human cloning is the production of children free of genetic flaws that one-day could cause certain diseases. Certain diseases could be avoided by changing the DNA, but this opens the door for new unknown diseases to be created through the gene pooling. The Advertiser on the 4/4/00 made this statement regarding the cloning of human cells ‘This could allow us to regrow a heart muscle or bone marrow and that is not a threat to humanity’ The statement means that through cloning new organs could be created. Scientists believe the technique could possible cure kidney, liver and heart disease, although church leaders argued that ‘embryo harvesting’ would never be acceptable. A ban on cloning may be unconstitutional it would restrict the freedom of scientists and deprive people of the right to reproduce. A vast misconception of clones is that they would be an exact duplicate of another person; this is incorrect due to the fact that environmental factors and past experiences would shape the clone into an individual person. Scientists predict that the clones would have the same sense of individually that’s twins have, but probably considerably more because they grew up at different periods. People who defend the banning o human cloning say that the same objections were similar to when people objected against other scientific achievements, for example test tube babies and heart transplants which all came to be later widely accepted.

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The ethical concerns raised are because the technique has not been perfected many deaths or mutations could occur in the clones or organs. This could cause pain for the clones, which I believe is unacceptable to create life only for it to experience defects or pain. This is due to the fact that not very much is known about what might happen and the possible disadvantages for the clone. An argument that people use against the cloning is that certain religious groups believe that it is against gods will. Also it was stated on world book online that ...

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