Human cloning: who is cloning humans and arguments against cloning (2007)
How human clones are being made - for medical research. Arguments for and against human cloning research. Why some people want to clone themselves or even to clone the dead (and not just cloning pets).
Why investors are moving away from human cloning and why human cloning now looks a last-century way to fight disease (2007)
Watch Another Anti Cloning Video
Should we ban human cloning? Arguments against cloning
Here are three reasons why we should say no to cloning - disadvantages:
1. Health risks from mutation of genes
An abnormal baby would be a nightmare come true. The technique is extremely risky right now. A particular worry is the possibility that the genetic material used from the adult will continue to age so that the genes in a newborn baby clone could be - say - 30 years old or more on the day of birth. Many attempts at animal cloning produced disfigured monsters with severe abnormalities. So that would mean creating cloned embryos, implanting them and destroying (presumably) those that look imperfect as they grow in the womb. However some abnormalities may not appear till after birth. A cloned cow recently died several weeks after birth with a huge abnormality of blood cell production. Dolly the Sheep died prematurely of severe lung disease in February 2003, and also suffered from arthritis at an unexpectedly early age - probably linked to the cloning process.
Even if a few cloned babies are born apparently normal we will have to wait up to 20 years to be sure they are not going to have problems later -for example growing old too fast. Every time a clone is made it is like throwing the dice and even a string of "healthy" clones being born would not change the likelihood that many clones born in future may have severe medical problems. And of course, that's just the ones born. What about all the disfigured and highly abnormal clones that either spontaneously aborted or were destroyed / terminated by scientists worried about the horrors they might be creating.
2. Emotional risks
A child grows up knowing her mother is her sister, her grandmother is her mother. Her father is her brother-in-law. Every time her mother looks at her, she is seeing herself growing up. Unbearable emotional pressures on a teenager trying to establish his or her identity. What happens to a marriage when the "father" sees his wife's clone grow up into the exact replica (by appearance) of the beautiful 18 year old he fell in love with 35 years ago? A sexual relationship would of course be with his wife's twin, no incest involved technically.
Or maybe the child knows it is the twin of a dead brother or sister. What kind of pressures will he or she feel, knowing they were made as a direct replacement for another? It is a human experiment doomed to failure because the child will NOT be identical in every way, despite the hopes of the parents. One huge reason will be that the child will be brought up in a highly abnormal household: one where grief has been diverted into makeing a clone instead of adjusting to loss. The family environment will be totally different than that the other twin experienced. That itself will place great pressures on the emotional development of the child. You will not find a child psychiatrist in the world who could possibly say that there will not be very significant emotional risk to the cloned child as a result of these pressures.
3. Risk of abuse of the technology
What would Hitler have done with cloning technology if available in the 1940s? There are powerful leaders in every generation who will seek to abuse this technology for their own purposes. Going ahead with cloning technology makes this far more likely. You cannot have so-called therapeutic cloning without reproductive cloning because the technique to make cloned babies is the same as to make a cloned embryo to try to make replacement tissues. And at the speed at which biotech is accelerating there will soon be other ways to get such cells - adult stem cell technology. It is rather crude to create a complete embryonic identical twin embryo just to get hold of stem cells to make - say - nervous tissue. Much better to take cells from the adult and trigger them directly to regress to a more primitive form without the ethical issues raised by inserting a full adult set of genes into an unfertilised egg.
Futurist keynote speaker and author of 19 books. Thirty years forecasting global trends for more than 400 clients, in every industry.
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175 commentsWhat are your own views? Comments are moderated before they appear.
right now, I am writing a essay on why cloning is wrong. i am not focusing on the ethical views but more of the facts. it causes premature death, costs tons of money, has seen a lot of failure, the clones life will be awful, and it reduces a sense of individually among people. good points or no?any ideas for more points?
you know that people are not cloning people that will live in today's society. they will be fetuses without a brain or a heart and as long as something is cloned with no defects it will have a perfect life (unless cloned from you). also, every early experiments experiences a lot of failures.
the are plenty of argument against human cloning -especially humans -ranging
from scientific issues,to the practicality of cloning to religious objection
I read a lot of these comments and thought them to be very entertaining..
Also I think cloning would be useful for things like replacing organs and other stuff.
I think that it would be cool to have a brother or sister that was a clone of myself but I realize that would kinda be selfish and too late ( it would be weird having a younger version of yourself running around causing chaos) another reason having a cloned sister or brother would be that their personality might not be the same as yours and its not positive they will even get along with you. so I would be better off with my actual brother or sister. I do think cloning extinct animals would be awesome, as long as its not like Jurassic Park. Also if I had a clone I would not fear being replaced it because its a different person than me it just looks like me and if it somehow had the same mind as I did I probably wouldn't care who was the clone and who wasn't and same with the clone. Anyhow I believe it could be useful but is not necessary
I THINK CLONING SHOULD NOT BE DONE BECAUSE IT COULD HURT OUR ENVIORMENT AND DO STUFF THAT WE REGULARLY DO NOT DO AND SOME GENE COMPLICATIONS COULD GO WRONG
cloning is not ok
Yes cloning is wrong but there is no reason to fight about it see some people are right and some people are wrong there is no right answer
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cloning should never be aloud by united nations and it should be totly band because it will have many disadvantages for exampel peopel can be created throgh cloning and they can be forced to fight against a country
Its hard for me to believe that someone would do this...although there are definitely medical benefits to be gained this is not without consequence. I don't need a PHD in science to know that if you take something away from nature, you eventually have to give it back. What Im trying to say is that with cloning life, this earth and us as humans will lose our identity as a whole race.
We humans are an amazingly resourceful species, but while this helped us to survive all sorts of devastations in the past we should stop at a certain point. Its part of the natural world as a human experience to being born, growing up and exploring the world. We should stop trying to cheat nature and bending rules that existed for ions to our own will.
Remember guys that life is not cruel, its the people who try to control the natural process of life that make it cruel.
Peace everyone
my dad hitler would of loved this technology of clones
The only reason that I think cloning is looked upon as a bad idea, because it would change the world as we know it it would break down the morals and values of normal religions and people themselves. People wouldn't know how to act towards religion anymore. It would have seemed they we have been lied to all these years just so that we could be taught right from wrong, good from the bad.
All the people that say it is a lack of human respect and thinking thescientist will look at themselves as Co-creators, is all a shame. In my opinion they are trying to stop us fromfinding out that there is really nothing to believe in and that we did just come from dust. The catholics and other religions have that correct we did come from dust or should I say elements tea ting in such a way that it was perfect and life could thrive, but as people we see that as to big of a step and that it is imposibble. But it is not my friends somewhere else in the universe we are not alone. I promise you that. But this would be blasfomouse wouldn't it? Saying god did not put us on this earth and that humans were made just by sheer coincidence. Well get it through your heads because that's what happened! Lol... I will say that if we do clone a human and it acts the same as everyone else(it will be like teaching a baby all over gain yes of course)then it will prove that there is faulty in the Catholic and other religions. just think a world without religion (did you think of koas) because that's how it would be. Religion is a passifier to hale the human race and give it meaning, and a reason to work together. You all seriously aren't dumb enough to think it was real were you?? God and all the other ma in religions are creation story's and ways so that we can see life has a meaning and a higher purpouse but it doesn't we are just moving along in space like normal elements and particles of dust. You might say "well what about the big bang huh???" the truth is no one knows a DAMN thing about the big bang air how the universe got started get it through your heads. Religions are just a creation story to tell us how we magically came to be poof we are here. No that didn't happen! Cloning would prove every religion wrong and say god or whoever it is is not the sout create of life god would cease to exist and the world would turn to turmoil. This is my imput on the subject. I say if catholics are against cloning, then they are scared to be proven wrong. I challenge science and religion to go head to head on this and figure out once and for all if there is a god at all or gods science will provail trust me.
The only reason that I think cloning is looked upon as a bad idea, because it would change the world as we know it it would break down the morals and values of normal religions and people themselves. People wouldn't know how to act towards religion anymore. It would have seemed they we have been lied to all these years just so that we could be taught right from wrong, good from the bad.
All the people that say it is a lack of human respect and thinking thescientist will look at themselves as Co-creators, is all a shame. In my opinion they are trying to stop us fromfinding out that there is really nothing to believe in and that we did just come from dust. The catholics and other religions have that correct we did come from dust or should I say elements tea ting in such a way that it was perfect and life could thrive, but as people we see that as to big of a step and that it is imposibble. But it is not my friends somewhere else in the universe we are not alone. I promise you that. But this would be blasfomouse wouldn't it? Saying god did not put us on this earth and that humans were made just by sheer coincidence. Well get it through your heads because that's what happened! Lol... I will say that if we do clone a human and it acts the same as everyone else(it will be like teaching a baby all over gain yes of course)then it will prove that there is faulty in the Catholic and other religions. just think a world without religion (did you think of koas) because that's how it would be. Religion is a passifier to hale the human race and give it meaning, and a reason to work together. You all seriously aren't dumb enough to think it was real were you?? God and all the other ma in religions are creation story's and ways so that we can see life has a meaning and a higher purpouse but it doesn't we are just moving along in space like normal elements and particles of dust. You might say "well what about the big bang huh???" the truth is no one knows a DAMN thing about the big bang air how the universe got started get it through your heads. Religions are just a creation story to tell us how we magically came to be poof we are here. No that didn't happen! Cloning would prove every religion wrong and say god or whoever it is is not the sout create of life god would cease to exist and the world would turn to turmoil. This is my imput on the subject. I say if catholics are against cloning, then they are scared to be proven wrong. I challenge science and religion to go head to head on this and figure out once and for all if there is a god at all or gods science will provail trust me.
The only reason that I think cloning is looked upon as a bad idea, because it would change the world as we know it it would break down the morals and values of normal religions and people themselves. People wouldn't know how to act towards religion anymore. It would have seemed they we have been lied to all these years just so that we could be taught right from wrong, good from the bad.
All the people that say it is a lack of human respect and thinking thescientist will look at themselves as Co-creators, is all a shame. In my opinion they are trying to stop us fromfinding out that there is really nothing to believe in and that we did just come from dust. The catholics and other religions have that correct we did come from dust or should I say elements tea ting in such a way that it was perfect and life could thrive, but as people we see that as to big of a step and that it is imposibble. But it is not my friends somewhere else in the universe we are not alone. I promise you that. But this would be blasfomouse wouldn't it? Saying god did not put us on this earth and that humans were made just by sheer coincidence. Well get it through your heads because that's what happened! Lol... I will say that if we do clone a human and it acts the same as everyone else(it will be like teaching a baby all over gain yes of course)then it will prove that there is faulty in the Catholic and other religions. just think a world without religion (did you think of koas) because that's how it would be. Religion is a passifier to hale the human race and give it meaning, and a reason to work together. You all seriously aren't dumb enough to think it was real were you?? God and all the other ma in religions are creation story's and ways so that we can see life has a meaning and a higher purpouse but it doesn't we are just moving along in space like normal elements and particles of dust. You might say "well what about the big bang huh???" the truth is no one knows a DAMN thing about the big bang air how the universe got started get it through your heads. Religions are just a creation story to tell us how we magically came to be poof we are here. No that didn't happen! Cloning would prove every religion wrong and say god or whoever it is is not the sout create of life god would cease to exist and the world would turn to turmoil. This is my imput on the subject. I say if catholics are against cloning, then they are scared to be proven wrong. I challenge science and religion to go head to head on this and figure out once and for all if there is a god at all or gods science will provail trust me.
god dos nut want it guys so stahp
Next time check your spelling you hippy
i think cloning is a good idea, i can clone myself and have i can find out what i taste like.
It's a bad Idea because you would have to raise a little u
You would actually be tasting your father if you were cloned
nO MAN THIS AINT NO GOOD IDEA
i fink clons is gud ye, cus i am clon and am rely smurt
yeah that why you are good at spelling
clones is the same as burgers.. you can eat them
FEED THE WORLD!!!
EAT THE CLONES!!
LOL
why so seriose lets put a smile on that face
u were watching bat man
To "In every advanced technology humans make there's an equal consequence it maybe be good or bad. Weigh things first, if cloning has more advantages than cons, then maybe it only means we have to go for it." I agree. Like when we were trying to learn about our world, and what it's made up of, we discovered the atom. In 1905, Albert Einstein wrote the mass-energy conversion equation. And Sir James Chadwick, a student and co-worker of Lord Rutherford, in 1932, discovered the third fundamental particle of the atom, the neutron. This would provide an ideal projectile for splitting the nucleus of the atom. These steps helped to create the atom bomb, even though the research was meant to further our knowledge of the universe. There's going to be people who turn something wonderful or helpful, into something destructive. But if we let this stop us, we will never move forward. Yes, cloning has 'bugs' right now, but in the future they'll be worked out. Cloning can help save lives. Why would you prevent that? To this question, don't explain it with religion, because I too, am religious, yet cloning, I feel, is not against religion. Give it a chance before you condemn an idea. Give cloning a chance to prove it's worth before you lash out in protest. Think about it. If it helps more than it harms, can it really be that bad?
what if you clon something that can damage the world and might bring something that can kill people
What are all of the cons of human cloning???
Here are some that i did find:
1) Cloning would/will undermine individually and identity.
2) Cloning would potentially pose a threat to human diversity and cause a deduction of genetics
I think cloning is only good in the medical field for science reasons.
I am a clone, are you all saying its wrong that I was made?
siiiiiiike
I am a clone, are you all saying its wrong that I was made?
Clones are not real and if they are we will find you and exterminate your population.
NO MORE CLONES!
NO MORE CLONES!
NO MORE CLONES!
yes it is
no no no no cloning should never be done on earth
exactly
when someone you know or love dies, its best you let them stay that way, no matter how much you miss them.
when someone you know or love dies, its best you let them stay that way, no matter how much you miss them.
Agreed
cloning would be ok if people would categorize them as blood related family. I would love to have a clone brother, I could show him all the cool stuff to do and he would get me. what ever I would say he would think im top dog. sadly if he had a mutation I dont know what to do with him. and btw if the mother had a clone then the father would keep in mind that its wrong to do things to his daughter (even if its a clone) THe clone would see it differently and would look at the husband like a father figure rather then her twins husband.
shut up u are wrong
well nice comeback
it happens in real life that a woman has a child that looks almost exactly like the mother or father. if that father has any feelings for that person then they have issues whether or not the child was a clone.
Banning cloning is a good idea because if it is.only for life saving than that is fone
there is no e in wrong but ur statement is so ture
don't think that human cloning is legal,its ethically and morally
wronge
Thanks everyone for all your comments - an important debate. I know many of you are reading this page because of a college assignment or project - do feel free to post here a summary of what you have written for others to benefit from.
This is funny, people are getting so annoyed by others comments and yet they don't even know how to spell half the words they are incorporating into their comment.
Furthermore, cloning is not wrong; it is very good, it is just what people do with it that is wrong. We should not clone animals or humans, cloning should be used to help replicate organs and cells to ensure that we, as humans, can live better lives. That's my opinion anyway.
this is wrong what do they think this is a horriable thing these peple ar epritty much say who care if a life form dies we saved another and this is what they think oh let me take what o want and the toss them away like there nothing those people belong in hell.
Well I think that many people reading this page agree with you.
Mostly misinformedAfter reading the three points brought up in the article, I felt like I had to counter
Arguement 1: Health risks.
I fully agree with this arguement, it is immoral to clone humans considering the current state of cloning technology, but remember cloning through somatic cell transfer is still in its infancy.
Arguement 2: Emotional Risks
I am not trying to downlplay the trauma the cloned individual will feel, but theoretically it is the same as a child who has just found out his 'parents' adopted him. This theory can constantly be argued with, but at the end of the day, there will not be an answer until we clone a human and see how he/she reacts.
I say individual because the cloned human would be a person too, it may be a genetic copy of someone else, but will be an entirely different person with as many similiarities as identical twins.
Arguement 3: Abuse of technology
Every person who is pro-cloning agrees that this is not in fact an arguement against cloning, but simply a violation of human rights. Hitler, or any other person, could easily have done the same to naturally born people.
Re: Mostly misinformedThink about how many times the bible has been translated. Then while you are at it think about how acurate our history books are. What we read is what the writer wanted us to remember. Who created the American Flag? If you think it is Betty Ross you need to Google it.
Though I believe in God, I also believe he gave us the intelligence to make ourselves better. And the means to do it. This is the best invention and we need to go with it.
this is wrong in a right wayim sure they have good intentions but they might be killing the next president! they are murdering the next generation!!!! god did give us a body but he never wanted us to duplicate it!
yes you are right because life is one and it can not be duplicated by individulas
yes you are right
cloning is amazin all u haters r rong init brap. haterz gunna hate.
how can you cite this?? LOL. it has good details for my bio project (:
havent any of you seen the 6th day?? wtf is wrong with you guys
cloningi dont think cloning should be legal, its ethically and morally wrong
yes my friend you are right
I believe in cloning. It can help us in so many ways. If cloning were to be legal it would be a choice, an option, so if you're against it, fine it won't affect you if you choose for it not to. But if someone is dying and needs an organ, and they choose to clone an organ of theirs or they already have a clone of themselves completely healthy, then HELL, it's saving them! If you're religious and say that only God gives us the right to be healthy or not etc, then I would be slightly appalled but I respect your opinion. I do not believe God is real. How can you believe in something you CAN NOT see, hear, or talk to? For that matter, how can you believe in a BOOK. The bible can and was written by anyone and everyone who had a say in it. This is why I am a LaVeyan Satanist. It is not horrid and blood crazy like it sounds (thank you movies). It simply is: You are your own highest being in your life, you put yourself first and therefore by a means "worship" yourself. Because after all, if you do not love yourself you can not truly love others. By putting yourself as your own greatest being (in an non-conceited way) you are able to control and handle your life the way you should, and you are responsible for all your actions. Any "God" was created by someone, therefore you are in turn worshipping someone you do not know, so why would I do this? I wouldn't. You can say God created us this way and we shouldn't change it, but I'd have a few simple but harsh words to say to your "God" then. He's quite loving isn't he, with all the blood and hate and diseases and cancer etc? Worship your God all you please, but Cloning is the Future and it WILL happen one way or the other.
this is good bro but....
There is nothing wrong with cloning.
yes it is they come out all deformed and all
hello (: ilove clonin ;)
In every advanced technology humans make there's an equal consequence it maybe be good or bad. But in the case of cloning human its totally wrong but if its therapeutic cloning it may save thousand lives. Especially, those who have been in a drastic accidents or those lives are at stake. Weigh things first, if cloning has more advantages than cons, then maybe it only means we have to go for it. Just dig deep.
this is wrong. i will smite you sll
God doesn't exist. Deal with it!!!!!
god is real so you better get to knowing that before you go to hell
Cloning is totally wrong!
Gross!!!
armiesif we could clone humans we could take dna from an athlete or someone and make countless soldiers. we would never run out of armies.
Re: armieswhat if someone evil gets hold of the formula for making clones, they could make armies turn on us?
it would be good, to a certain extent. but not all good.
Re: armiesWe would never run out of armies???....really.....Why would we even need armies then. if one country could clone soldiers, so could the others. Hellooo????
cloningme, they also said that we would never reach the moon.. if we had walked up to a scientist from centuries ago and said that we would be flying in metal birds, and walking on the moon he would have said thta it's physically impossible and have us admitted to a mental hospital. so, in theory im not going to say thet its impossible, but if it does happen and the lifeform is sustainable i think that scientists need a HUGE raise in pay.
cloningi think you have an excellent point waveryder, and also if hitler had had cloning abilites he probably would have got his way, so i think that cloning humans is wrong in some cases for the wrong reasons, but when it is used to give a couple that is incapable of giving birth, then i think it's fine. and also if they can cure disease by cloning a cell of it and showing the body how to defend against that disease, then im all for it :)
clonesi think cloning is a global issue, and could help alot of people be happy, or to save llives.
if god didnt want us to clone he wouldnt have let us find out about it. right?
human cloningGod made marijuana does that mean we should all smoke it?
cloningCloning is wrong.We should not clone people that can kill us
truly speaking cloning is good for medical reasons anyway thumbs up good debate
CloningI am only 13 years old but I believe cloning is wrong. Who is to say that people will stop at cloning animals. I also believe that it is wrong and that its God's job to create people not ours. Also Hitler wanted to create the perfect race, think if he had our technology and he cloned what would he do? Do you really think cloning will solve any of our problems. Cloning a human will cost tons of money, money that could be used on other things
Re: Cloning... God is not real.
Re: Cloninghey dont say that hurhur god is real the bible is proof
Re: Cloning,, yah u hav the point...
douche
clonesi disagree with clones
Re: clonesthat is so detailed.
Re: clonesand who says the bible is real?
god has three letters in it three sides to a triangle Illuminati confirmed
Cloning humans won't make them animals, that's impossible. What cloning can do is make long term diseases and illnesses for things that are cloned. They could die at a younger age than they are supposed to, that is if they even survive through birth
helloi think cloning is bad because so many things can g wrong when you are trying to clone something someone ar i mean someones best friend
if someone want a baby in their life then should they be allow to clone?i think if a person is unable to give birth to a baby but they want to have a baby then also cloning is not the right way to have a baby.they can adopt a baby from orphenage if they really want baby in their life.
Re: if someone want a baby in their life then should they be allow to clone?choose adoption its eithical
my opinioni have been doing a project as weel and i feel it is against all odds i mean wut if they come out as an animal it is stupied cloneing is so wrong
Re: my opinionYou sound like you're a little kid and you clearly should not be dealing with matters such as cloning. They are way beyond your petite knowledge.
cloneyes. we must clone. to save us all
Re: clonewhat
Re: clonehow is cloning going to save us ?
Re: clonecloning is bad. real bad. you can have SEX but there will be no babies...
Re: clonegurl/boy u is a mess cloning will KILL us all DUHHH...!!!
WEE COULD ALL DIE BECAUSEE OF CLONING
PEOPLEE COULD TAKE OVER OUR LIVESS IF THEY LOOK LIKEE US WE COULD DIE AND OTHERSS WOULDNT KNOW BECAUSEE THERE IS SOMEONE WALKING AROUND LOOKING JUST LIKE US
Re: cloneby cloning cells and replacing diseased ones with them
Re: cloneAbbie^ thats not true there would still be a percentage and a chance to have a child. Same as with animal clones, many have reproduced successfully and had healthy babies that survived through their adulthood.
I agree with cloning can save us, think of all the abnormalities humans have these days, and cancers, diseases etc. Who's to say we don't deserve the chance to have a clone of ourselves, imagine all the things they could help us with!
And if we need organs? Shall we wait endlessly on line for an organ that may or may not come to us on time? If we could clone, we could clone a healthy organ and transfer it into ourselves faster than before, therefore saving our own lives.
Human cloningWhat is the point of human cloning. If you arent able to have kids and you decide to have a cloned baby, you will have to live with the fact that its isnt real, its not yours, it was just made. Why would you want to live with all though opinions and facts. just image if someone came up to you and asked you who the father is, and you would have to say noone, just image how painful that would be for you just to say. Do you really want to live with the fact its not really yours? :/
Re: Human cloningEven if it is made, it is still part of you if you're cloning yourself!
Re: Human cloningTrue it will be hard but if that is thhe way they want to go then its their problem.
Me myself i don't agree with it becouse it will just be heart breakeing when they find out.
Re: Human cloningWorry about yourself and let other people make the choice of owning a 'fake' baby for themselves.
Re: Human cloningYES :)
CloningWe think that cloning is a bad thing because it could start reproudrucion!
why are people aganist cloning
because cloneing could ruin your future and your kids future, cloneing could over populate the world or we could clone the wrong things and it clould take control, is that what you want? hah. well im not saying all cloning is bad im for the cloning for donors and other good stuff, but is it neccesary to clone a whole human? there could be so many things that could go wrong, they, just like any other man made thing, could have several problems, physco running clones isnt really what i dream about at night.
r u jokin me??
didnt you read this article gosh!!
bcs it would be taking away gods thunder
i think cloning is so wrong....
who would what to me cloned not me..
whoever is for it they're stupid!!!
cloning humans would never work. Never ever ever ever
l./nj,kcloning does work u idiot
cloning is the future....
pfft..So you think the future is a child growing up knowing his mother is his sister, his grandmother is his mother and his father is his brother-in-law?? .....hOw NiCe -_-'
WTFomg no it isn i got cloned and im dead
About cloning....It is wrong to create something that wont even be the same thing as the real person.... brought in different homes.. raised different. I just think cloning is wrong and should always be banned and stop wasting money and time to think about cloning....
Re: About cloning....u r so rite im against cloning too..
i thin thats so wrong...
why would somebody liked to be clon..
not just human cloningI think that human cloning could bring many advances to the world. Cloning, to me, does not just involving human cloning. Cloning can be used to treat diseases and replace organs. Pretty sure it’s not just me but if you were dying because you needed a new heart or liver or lungs or whatever, you would enjoy having a cloned one. Having a cloned organ would mean no rejection of the organ from you body. Scientists have also said that with human cloning one of the first diseases they can fix is Leukemia. If you knew one of your kids in the future was going to get Leukemia and knew that it could be cured, can you still say you would be against cloning knowing it could possibly save your child? Or say your best friend was in an accident and got brain damage, would you support cloning if they said they could create new brain cells for him and he would be normal again, or would you let him suffer and be a vegetable the rest of his life? Say he became quadriplegic, Scientists have said that there is a possibility that new spinal cord cells can be made and walking again is an option. So maybe actually cloning a human or possibly super humans might not be the best for the world today but great medical advantages can come if cloning is not banned and further research is allowed.
I also think that on the "God" issue that this would be a real test. If a Clone of a human is done successfully and god exists then this clone would have no soul it would be not a person but a body that acts on instinct. And if this clone is fine and acts as if it were a real person submitted though psychoanalytical test ect.. Then god is not real.
Re: not just human cloningthat's why a Human Clone hasn't legitimately happened yet, (and it never will) becasue God wouldn't allow it. :)
Praying for you,
MC
Re: not just human cloningdang thats alot
Re: not just human cloningForgive him Lord for He not know what he has said.
Re: not just human cloninghey dont say god isnt real. if he wasnt real then how did we get here?
Re:My oppinon on the subject is human cloning should not be allowed. It will cause problems we would end up using it for warfare sothen other countries would use it for warfare wich would be chaos it is already bad enough all of the war we have now.
Another reason is I am a religous person and I figure when god wants more humans he will make more. If he wanted humans interfering in the creation of humans he would ask for it. And not haveus call on our selves to create more humans expecially for evil purposes like war. Because a lot of our war ends up hell on earth.
Cloning-to-produce-children has been the subject of two major national reports in recent years – first by the National Bioethics Advisory Commission in June 1997,1 and more recently by the National Academy of Sciences in January 2002.2 Both reports concluded that attempts to clone a human being "at this time" would be unethical, owing to questions about the safety of the technique and the likelihood of physical harm to those involved. But both reports also concluded that the nation required much deeper reflection about the "ethical and social implications" of cloning-to-produce-children beyond the scientific and medical aspects of the procedure. As the National Academy of Sciences report stated:
Our present opposition to human reproductive cloning is based on science and medicine, irrespective of broader considerations. The panel stresses, however, that a broad ethical debate must be encouraged so that the public can be prepared to make decisions if human reproductive cloning is some day considered medically safe for mothers and offspring.3
In this chapter we attempt to take up this charge to engage in a broad ethical consideration of the merits of cloning-to-produce-children.
The prospect of cloning-to-produce-children raises a host of moral questions, among them the following: Could the first attempts to clone a human child be made without violating accepted moral norms governing experimentation on human subjects? What harms might be inflicted on the cloned child as a consequence of having been made a clone? Is it significant that the cloned child would inherit a genetic identity lived in advance by another – and, in some cases, the genetic identity of the cloned child's rearing parent? Is it significant that cloned children would be the first human beings whose genetic identity was entirely known and selected in advance? How might cloning-to-produce-children affect relationships within the cloning families? More generally, how might it affect the relationship between the generations? How might it affect the way society comes to view children? What other prospects would we be tacitly approving in advance by accepting this practice? What important human goods might be enhanced or sacrificed were we to approve cloning-to-produce-children?
In what follows, we shall explicitly consider many of these questions. But as we do so, we shall not lose sight of the larger and fundamental human contexts discussed in Chapter One – namely, the meaning of human procreation and care of children, the means and ends of biotechnology, and the relation between science and society. Indeed, overarching our entire discussion of the specific ethical issues is our concern for the human significance of procreation as a whole and our desire to protect what is valuable in it from erosion and degradation – not just from cloning but from other possible technological and nontechnological dangers. Readers of this report are encouraged to consider the discussion that follows in a similar light.
We will begin by formulating the best moral case for cloning-to-produce-children – describing both the specific purposes it might serve and the philosophic and moral arguments made in its favor. From there we will move to the moral case against cloning-to-produce-children. Beginning with the safety objections that have dominated the debate thus far, we will show how these concerns ultimately point beyond themselves toward broader ethical concerns. Chief among these is how cloning-to-produce-children would challenge the basic nature of human procreation and the meaning of having children. We shall also consider cloning's effects on human identity, how it might move procreation toward a form of manufacture or toward eugenics, and how it could distort family relations and affect society as a whole.
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I. The Case for Cloning-to-Produce-Children
Arguments in defense of cloning-to-produce-children often address questions of reproduction, but they tend to focus on only a relatively narrow sliver of the goods and principles involved. This certainly does not mean that such arguments lack merit. Indeed, some of the arguments in favor of cloning-to-produce-children appeal to the deepest and most meaningful of our society's shared values.
A. Purposes
In recent years, in anticipation of cloning-to-produce-children, proponents have articulated a variety of possible uses of a perfected technology: providing a "biologically related child" for an infertile couple; permitting reproduction for single individuals or same-sex couples; avoiding the risk of genetic disease; securing a genetically identical source of organs or tissues perfectly suitable for transplantation; "replacing" a loved spouse or child who is dying or has died; obtaining a child with a genotype of one's own choosing (including one's own genotype); replicating individuals of great genius, talent, or beauty, or individuals possessing traits that are for other reasons attractive to the cloners; and creating sets of genetically identical humans who might have special advantages in highly cooperative ventures in both war and peace.4 The desire to control or select the genomes of children-to-be through cloning has charmed more than a few prospective users, in the United States and around the world.
Although we appreciate that a perfected technology, once introduced for one purpose, might then be used for any of these purposes, we shall examine further only those stated purposes that seem to us to merit serious consideration.
1. To Produce Biologically Related Children
Human cloning would allow individuals or couples with fertility problems to have biologically related children. For example, if a man could not produce sperm, cloning would allow him to have a child who is "biologically related" to him. In addition, it would allow married couples with fertility problems to avoid using donor gametes, and therefore avoid raising children with genetic inheritances from outside the marriage.
2. To Avoid Genetic Disease
Human cloning could allow couples at risk of generating children with genetic disease to have healthy children. For example, if both parents carried one copy of a recessive gene for the same heritable disorder, cloning might allow them to ensure that their child does not inherit the known genetic disease (without having to resort to using donor gametes or practicing preimplantation or prenatal genetic diagnosis and elimination of afflicted embryos or fetuses).
3. To Obtain "Rejection-Proof" Transplants
Human cloning could produce ideal transplant donors for people who are sick or dying. For example, if no genetic match could be found for a sick child needing a kidney or bone marrow transplant, and the parents had planned to have another child, cloning could potentially serve the human goods of beginning a new life and saving an existing one.
4. To "Replicate" a Loved One
Human cloning would allow parents to "replicate" a dead or dying child or relative. For example, one can imagine a case in which a family – mother, father, and child – is involved in a terrible car accident in which the father dies instantly and the child is critically injured. The mother, told that her child will soon die, decides that the best way to redeem the tragedy is to clone her dying child. This would allow her to preserve a connection with both her dead husband and her dying child, to create new life as a partial human answer to the grievous misfortune of her child's untimely death, and to continue the name and biological lineage of her deceased husband.
5. To Reproduce Individuals of Great Genius, Talent, or Beauty
Human cloning would allow families or society to reproduce individuals of great genius, talent, or beauty, where these traits are presumed to be based on the individuals' desirable or superior genetic makeups. For example, some admirers of great athletes, musicians, or mathematicians, believing that the admired attributes are the result of a superior genetic endowment, might want to clone these distinguished individuals. Just as the cloning of cattle is being promoted as a means of perpetuating champion milk- or meat-producing cows, so cloning-to-produce-children has been touted as a means of perpetuating certain "superior" human exemplars.
B. Arguments
The purposes or reasons for cloning-to-produce-children are, as they are stated, clearly intelligible on their face. When challenged, the defenders of these purposes often appeal to larger moral and political goods. These typically fall within the following three categories: human freedom, existence, and well-being.
1. The Goodness of Human Freedom
Strictly speaking, the appeal to human freedom is not so much a defense of cloning itself as it is of the right to practice it, asserted against those who seek to prohibit it. No one, we suspect, would say that he wanted to clone himself or any one else in order to be free or to vindicate the goodness of liberty. Nevertheless, human freedom is a defense often heard in support of a "right" to clone.
Those who defend cloning-to-produce-children on the grounds of human freedom make two kinds of arguments. The first is that because individuals in pluralistic societies have different definitions of the good life and of right and wrong, society must protect individual freedom to choose against the possible tyranny of the majority. This means securing and even expanding the rights of individuals to make choices so long as their choices do not directly infringe on the rights (and especially the physical safety) of other rights-bearing citizens. In Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972), the United States Supreme Court enunciated what has been called a principle of reproductive freedom: "If the right to privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so affecting a person as a decision whether to bear or beget a child."5 Defenders of cloning-to-produce-children argue that, in the event that the physical risks to mother and future child were shown to be ethically acceptable, the use of this new reproductive technology would fall under the protective umbrella of reproductive freedom.
A second defense of human cloning on the grounds of freedom is the claim that human existence is by its very nature "open-ended," "indeterminate," and "unpredictable." Human beings are always remaking themselves, their values, and their ways of interacting with one another. New technologies are central to this open-ended idea of human life, and to shut down such technologies simply because they change the "traditional" ways of doing things is unjustifiable. As constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe has argued in reference to human cloning: "A society that bans acts of human creation that reflect unconventional sex roles or parenting models (surrogate motherhood, in vitro fertilization, artificial insemination, and the like) for no better reason than that such acts dare to defy 'nature' and tradition (and to risk adding to life's complexity) is a society that risks cutting itself off from vital experimentation and risks sterilizing a significant part of its capacity to grow."6
2. The Goodness of Existence
Like the appeal to freedom, the appeal to the goodness of existence is not an argument for cloning, but an argument against opponents who speak up in the name of protecting the cloned child-to-be against the harms connected with its risky and strange origins as a clone. This argument asserts that attempts to produce children through cloning, like any attempt to produce a child, will directly benefit the cloned child-to-be, since without the act of cloning the child in question would not exist. Existence itself, it is argued, is the first "interest" that makes all other interests – including the interests of safety and well-being – possible. Even taking into account the possibility of serious genetic or developmental disorders, this position holds that a cloned individual, once born, would prefer existence as a clone to no existence at all. There is also a serious corollary about how, in the absence of a principle that values existence as such, we will and should regard and treat people born with disabilities or deformities: opponents of cloning might appear in a position of intolerance – of saying to cloned individuals, "Better for us (and for you) had you never existed."
3. The Goodness of Well-Being
The third moral argument for cloning-to-produce-children is that it would contribute in certain cases to the fulfillment of human goods that are widely honored and deeply rooted in modern democratic society. These human goods include the health of newborn and existing children, reproductive possibilities for infertile couples, and the possibility of having a biologically related child. In all these circumstances, human cloning could relieve existing suffering and sorrow or prevent them in the future. Those who take this position do not necessarily defend human cloning-to-produce-children as such. Rather, they argue that a moral and practical line can be drawn between cloning-to-produce-children that serves the "therapeutic" aims of health (for the cloned child-to-be, for the infertile couple, or for an existing child) and the "eugenic" aims of producing or mass-producing superior people.
Some people argue more broadly that an existing generation has a responsibility to ensure, to the extent possible, the genetic quality and fitness of the next generation. Human cloning, they argue, offers a new method for human control and self-improvement, by allowing families to have children free of specific genetic diseases or society to reproduce children with superior genetic endowments. It also provides a new means for gaining knowledge about the age-old question of nature versus nurture in contributing to human achievement and human flourishing, and to see how clones of great geniuses measure up against the "originals."
C. Critique and Conclusion
While we as a Council acknowledge merit in some of the arguments made for cloning-to-produce-children, we are generally not persuaded by them. The fundamental weakness of the proponents' case is found in their incomplete view of human procreation and families, and especially the place and well-being of children. Proponents of cloning tend to see procreation primarily as the free exercise of a parental right, namely, a right to satisfy parental desires for self-fulfillment or a right to have a child who is healthy or "superior." Parents seek to overcome obstacles to reproduction, to keep their children free of genetic disease or disorder, and to provide them with the best possible genetic endowment. The principles guiding such prospective parents are freedom (for themselves), control (over their child), and well-being (both for themselves and what they imagine is best for their child). Even taken together, these principles provide at best only a partial understanding of the meaning and entailments of human procreation and child-rearing. In practice, they may prove to undermine the very goods that the proponents of cloning aim to serve, by undermining the unconditional acceptance of one's offspring that is so central to parenthood.
There are a number of objections – or at the very least limitations – to viewing cloning-to-produce-children through the prism of rights. Basic human rights are usually asserted on behalf of the human individual agent: for example, a meaningful right not to be prevented from bearing a child can be asserted for each individual against state-mandated sterilization programs. But the act of procreation is not an act involving a single individual. Indeed, until human cloning arrives, it continues to be impossible for any one person to procreate alone. More important, there is a crucial third party involved: the child, whose centrality to the activity exposes the insufficiency of thinking about procreation in terms of rights.
After all, rights are limited in the following crucial way: they cannot be ethically exercised at the expense of the rights of another. But the "right to reproduce" cannot be ethically exercised without at least considering the child that such exercise will bring into being and who is at risk of harm and injustice from the exercise. This obligation cannot be waived by an appeal to the absolutist argument of the goodness of existence. Yes, existence is a primary good, but that does not diminish the ethical significance of knowingly and willfully putting a child in grave physical danger in the very act of giving that child existence. It is certainly true that a life with even severe disability may well be judged worth living by its bearer: "It is better to have been born as I am than not to be here at all." But if his or her disability was caused by behavior that could have been avoided by parents (for example, by not drinking or using drugs during pregnancy, or, arguably, by not cloning), many would argue that they should have avoided it. A post-facto affirmation of existence by the harmed child would not retroactively excuse the parental misconduct that caused the child's disability, nor would it justify their failure to think of the child's well-being as they went about exercising their "right to procreate." Indeed, procreation is, by its very nature, a limitation of absolute rights, since it brings into existence another human being toward whom we have responsibilities and duties.
In short, the right to decide "whether to bear or beget a child" does not include a right to have a child by whatever means. Nor can this right be said to imply a corollary – the right to decide what kind of child one is going to have. There are at least some circumstances where reproductive freedom must be limited to protect the good of the child (as, for instance, with the ban on incest). Our society's commitment to freedom and parental authority by no means implies that all innovative procedures and practices should be allowed or accepted, no matter how bizarre or dangerous.
Proponents of cloning, when they do take into account the interests of the child, sometimes argue that this interest justifies and even requires thoroughgoing parental control over the procreative process. Yet this approach, even when well-intentioned, may undermine the good of the child more than it serves the child's best interests. For one thing, cloning-to-produce-children of a desired or worthy sort overlooks the need to restrain the parental temptation to total mastery over children. It is especially morally dubious for this project to go forward when we know so little about the unforeseen and unintended consequences of exercising such genetic control. In trying by cloning to circumvent the risk of genetic disease or to promote particular traits, it is possible – perhaps likely – that new risks to the cloned child's health and fitness would be inadvertently introduced (including the forgoing of genetic novelty, a known asset in the constant struggle against microbial and parasitic diseases). Parental control is a double-edged sword, and proponents seem not to acknowledge the harms, both physical and psychological, that may befall the child whose genetic identity is selected in advance.
The case for cloning in the name of the child's health and well-being is certainly the strongest and most compelling. The desire that one's child be free from a given genetic disease is a worthy aspiration. We recognize there may be some unusual or extreme cases in which cloning might be the best means to serve this moral good, if other ethical obstacles could somehow be overcome. (A few of us also believe that the desire to give a child "improved" or "superior" genetic equipment is not necessarily to be condemned.) However, such aspirations could endanger the personal, familial, and societal goods supported by the character of human procreation. We are willing to grant that there may be exceptional cases in which cloning-to-produce-children is morally defensible; however, that being said, we would also argue that such cases do not justify the harmful experiments and social problems that might be entailed by engaging in human cloning. Hard cases are said to make bad law. The same would be true for succumbing to the rare, sentimentally appealing case in which cloning seems morally plausible.i
Finally, proponents do not adequately face up to the difficulty of how "well-being" is to be defined. Generally, they argue that these matters are to be left up to the free choices of parents and doctors. But this means that the judgments of "proper" and "improper" will be made according to subjective criteria alone, and under such circumstances, it will be almost impossible to rule out certain "improvements" as unacceptable.
In the sections that follow, we shall explain more fully why Members of the Council are not convinced by the arguments for cloning-to-produce-children, even in the most defensible cases. To see why this is so, we need to consider cloning-to-produce-children from the broadest possible moral perspective, beginning with ethical questions regarding experiments on human subjects. What we hope to show is that the frequently made safety arguments strike deeper than we usually realize, and that they point beyond themselves toward more fundamental moral objections to cloning-to-produce-children.
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II. The Case against Cloning-to-Produce-Children
A. The Ethics of Human Experimentation
We begin with concerns regarding the safety of the cloning procedure and the health of the participants. We do so for several reasons. First, these concerns are widely, indeed nearly unanimously, shared. Second, they lend themselves readily to familiar modes of ethical analysis – including concerns about harming the innocent, protecting human rights, and ensuring the consent of all research subjects. Finally, if carefully considered, these concerns begin to reveal the important ethical principles that must guide our broader assessment of cloning-to-produce-children. They suggest that human beings, unlike inanimate matter or even animals, are in some way inviolable, and therefore challenge us to reflect on what it is about human beings that makes them inviolable, and whether cloning-to-produce-children threatens these distinctly human goods.
In initiating this analysis, there is perhaps no better place to start than the long-standing international practice of regulating experiments on human subjects. After all, the cloning of a human being, as well as all the research and trials required before such a procedure could be expected to succeed, would constitute experiments on the individuals involved – the egg donor, the birthing mother, and especially the child-to-be. It therefore makes sense to consider the safety and health concerns that arise from cloning-to-produce-children in light of the widely shared ethical principles that govern experimentation on human subjects.
Since the Second World War, various codes for the ethical conduct of human experimentation have been adopted around the world. These codes and regulations were formulated in direct response to serious ethical lapses and violations committed by research scientists against the rights and dignity of individual human beings. Among the most important and widely accepted documents to emerge were the Nuremberg Code of 19477 and the Helsinki Declaration of 1964.8 Influential in the United States is also the Belmont Report, published in 1978 by the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research.9
The Nuremberg Code laid out ten principles for the ethical conduct of experiments, focusing especially on voluntary consent of research subjects, the principle that experiments should be conducted only with the aim of providing a concrete good for society that is unprocurable by other methods, and with the avoidance of physical or mental harm. The Helsinki Declaration stated, among other things, that research should be undertaken only when the prospective benefit clearly outweighs the expected risk, when the research subject has been fully informed of all risks, and when the research-subject population is itself likely to benefit from the results of the experiment.
Finally, the Belmont Report proposed three basic ethical principles that were to guide the treatment of human subjects involved in scientific research. The first of these is respect for persons, which requires researchers to acknowledge the autonomy and individual rights of research subjects and to offer special protection to those with diminished autonomy and capacity. The second principle is beneficence. Scientific research must not only refrain from harming those involved but must also be aimed at helping them, or others, in concrete and important ways. The third principle is justice, which involves just distribution of potential benefits and harms and fair selection of research subjects. When applied, these general principles lead to both a requirement for informed consent of human research subjects and a requirement for a careful assessment of risks and benefits before proceeding with research. Safety, consent, and the rights of research subjects are thus given the highest priority.
It would be a mistake to view these codes in narrow or procedural terms, when in fact they embody society's profound sense that human beings are not to be treated as experimental guinea pigs for scientific research. Each of the codes was created to address a specific disaster involving research science – whether the experiments conducted by Nazi doctors on concentration camp prisoners, or the Willowbrook scandal in which mentally retarded children were infected with hepatitis, or the Tuskegee scandal in which underprivileged African-American men suffering from syphilis were observed but not treated by medical researchers – and each of the codes was an attempt to defend the inviolability and dignity of all human beings in the face of such threats and abuses. More simply stated, the codes attempt to defend the weak against the strong and to uphold the equal dignity of all human beings. In taking up the application of these codes to the case of cloning-to-produce-children, we would suggest that the proper approach is not simply to discover specific places where human cloning violates this or that stipulation of this or that code, but to grapple with how such cloning offends the spirit of these codes and what they seek to defend.
The ethics of research on human subjects suggest three sorts of problems that would arise in cloning-to-produce-children: (1) problems of safety; (2) a special problem of consent; and (3) problems of exploitation of women and the just distribution of risk. We shall consider each in turn.
1. Problems of Safety
First, cloning-to-produce-children is not now safe. Concerns about the safety of the individuals involved in a cloning procedure are shared by nearly everyone on all sides of the cloning debate. Even most proponents of cloning-to-produce-children generally qualify their support with a caveat about the safety of the procedure. Cloning experiments in other mammals strongly suggest that cloning-to-produce-children is, at least for now, far too risky to attempt.10 Safety concerns revolve around potential dangers to the cloned child, as well as to the egg donor and the woman who would carry the cloned child to birth.
(a) Risks to the child. Risks to the cloned child-to-be must be taken especially seriously, both because they are most numerous and most serious and because – unlike the risks to the egg donor and birth mother – they cannot be accepted knowingly and freely by the person who will bear them. In animal experiments to date, only a small percentage of implanted clones have resulted in live births, and a substantial portion of those live-born clones have suffered complications that proved fatal fairly quickly. Some serious though nonfatal abnormalities in cloned animals have also been observed, including substantially increased birth-size, liver and brain defects, and lung, kidney, and cardiovascular problems.11
Longer-term consequences are of course not known, as the oldest successfully cloned mammal is only six years of age. Medium-term consequences, including premature aging, immune system failure, and sudden unexplained death, have already become apparent in some cloned mammals. Some researchers have also expressed concerns that a donor nucleus from an individual who has lived for some years may have accumulated genetic mutations that – if the nucleus were used in the cloning of a new human life – may predispose the new individual to certain sorts of cancer and other diseases.12
(b) Risks to the egg donor and the birth mother. Accompanying the threats to the cloned child's health and well-being are risks to the health of the egg donors. These include risks to her future reproductive health caused by the hormonal treatments required for egg retrieval and general health risks resulting from the necessary superovulation.13
Animal studies also suggest the likelihood of health risks to the woman who carries the cloned fetus to term. The animal data suggest that late-term fetal losses and spontaneous abortions occur substantially more often with cloned fetuses than in natural pregnancies. In humans, such late-term fetal losses may lead to substantially increased maternal morbidity and mortality. In addition, animal studies have shown that many pregnancies involving cloned fetuses result in serious complications, including toxemia and excessive fluid accumulation in the uterus, both of which pose risks to the pregnant animal's health.14 In one prominent cattle cloning study, just under one-third of the pregnant cows died from complications late in pregnancy.15
Reflecting on the dangers to birth mothers in animal cloning studies, the National Academy report concluded:
Results of animal studies suggest that reproductive cloning of humans would similarly pose a high risk to the health of both fetus or infant and mother and lead to associated psychological risks for the mother as a consequence of late spontaneous abortions or the birth of a stillborn child or a child with severe health problems. 16
(c) An abiding moral concern. Because of these risks, there is widespread agreement that, at least for now, attempts at cloning-to-produce-children would constitute unethical experimentation on human subjects and are therefore impermissible. These safety considerations were alone enough to lead the National Bioethics Advisory Commission in June 1997 to call for a temporary prohibition of human cloning-to-produce-children. Similar concerns, based on almost five more years of animal experimentation, convinced the panel of the National Academy of Sciences in January 2002 that the United States should ban such cloning for at least five years.
Past discussions of this subject have often given the impression that the safety concern is a purely temporary one that can be allayed in the near future, as scientific advances and improvements in technique reduce the risks to an ethically acceptable level. But this impression is mistaken, for considerable safety risks are likely to be enduring, perhaps permanent. If so, there will be abiding ethical difficulties even with efforts aimed at making human cloning safe.
The reason is clear: experiments to develop new reproductive technologies are necessarily intergenerational, undertaken to serve the reproductive desires of prospective parents but practiced also and always upon prospective children. Any such experiment unavoidably involves risks to the child-to-be, a being who is both the product and also the most vulnerable human subject of the research. Exposed to risk during the extremely sensitive life-shaping processes of his or her embryological development, any child-to-be is a singularly vulnerable creature, one maximally deserving of protection against risk of experimental (and other) harm. If experiments to learn how to clone a child are ever to be ethical, the degree of risk to that child-to-be would have to be extremely low, arguably no greater than for children-to-be who are conceived from union of egg and sperm. It is extremely unlikely that this moral burden can be met, not for decades if at all.
In multiple experiments involving six of the mammalian species cloned to date, more than 89 percent of the cloned embryos transferred to recipient females did not come to birth, and many of the live-born cloned animals are or become abnormal.17 If success means achieving normal and healthy development not just at birth but throughout the life span, there is even less reason for confidence. The oldest cloned mammal (Dolly) is only six years old and has exhibited unusually early arthritis. The reasons for failure in animal cloning are not well understood. Also, no nonhuman primates have been cloned. It will be decades (at least) before we could obtain positive evidence that cloned primates might live a normal healthy (primate) life.
Even a high success rate in animals would not suffice by itself to make human trials morally acceptable. In addition to the usual uncertainties in jumping the gap from animal to human research, cloning is likely to present particularly difficult problems of interspecies difference. Animal experiments have already shown substantial differences in the reproductive success of identical cloning techniques used in different species.18 If these results represent species-specific differences in, for example, the ease of epigenetic reprogramming and imprinting of the donor DNA, the magnitude of the risks to the child-to-be of the first human cloning experiments would be unknown and potentially large, no matter how much success had been achieved in animals. There can in principle be no direct experimental evidence sufficient for assessing the degree of such risk.ii
Can a highly reduced risk of deformity, disease, and premature death in animal cloning, coupled with the inherently unpredictable risk of moving from animals to humans, ever be low enough to meet the ethically acceptable standard set by reproduction begun with egg and sperm? The answer, as a matter of necessity, can never be better than "Just possibly." Given the severity of the possible harms involved in human cloning, and given that those harms fall on the very vulnerable child-to-be, such an answer would seem to be enduringly inadequate.
Similar arguments, it is worth noting, were made before the first attempts at human in vitro fertilization. People suggested that it would be unethical experimentation even to try to determine whether IVF could be safely done. And then, of course, IVF was accomplished. Eventually, it became a common procedure, and today the moral argument about its safety seems to many people beside the point. Yet the fact of success in that case does not establish precedent in this one, nor does it mean that the first attempts at IVF were not in fact unethical experiments upon the unborn, despite the fortunate results.iii
Be this as it may, the case of cloning is genuinely different. With IVF, assisted fertilization of egg by sperm immediately releases a developmental process, linked to the sexual union of the two gametes, that nature has selected over millions of years for the entire mammalian line. But in cloning experiments to produce children, researchers would be transforming a sexual system into an asexual one, a change that requires major and "unnatural" reprogramming of donor DNA if there is to be any chance of success. They are neither enabling nor restoring a natural process, and the alterations involved are such that success in one species cannot be presumed to predict success in another. Moreover, any new somatic mutations in the donor cell's chromosomal DNA would be passed along to the cloned child-to-be and its offspring. Here we can see even more the truly intergenerational character of cloning experimentation, and this should justify placing the highest moral burden of persuasion on those who would like to proceed with efforts to make cloning safe for producing children. (By reminding us of the need to protect the lives and well-being of our children and our children's children, this broader analysis of the safety question points toward larger moral objections to producing cloned children, objections that we shall consider shortly.)
It therefore appears to us that, given the dangers involved and the relatively limited goods to be gained from cloning-to-produce-children, conducting experiments in an effort to make cloning-to-produce-children safer would itself be an unacceptable violation of the norms of the ethics of research. There seems to be no ethical way to try to discover whether cloning-to-produce-children can become safe, now or in the future.
2. A Special Problem of Consent
A further concern relating to the ethics of human research revolves around the question of consent. Consent from the cloned child-to-be is of course impossible to obtain, and because no one consents to his or her own birth, it may be argued that concerns about consent are misplaced when applied to the unborn. But the issue is not so simple. For reasons having to do both with the safety concerns raised above and with the social, psychological, and moral concerns to be addressed below, an attempt to clone a human being would potentially expose a cloned individual-to-be to great risks of harm, quite distinct from those accompanying other sorts of reproduction. Given the risks, and the fact that consent cannot be obtained, the ethically correct choice may be to avoid the experiment. The fact that those engaged in cloning cannot ask an unconceived child for permission places a burden on the cloners, not on the child. Given that anyone considering creating a cloned child must know that he or she is putting a newly created human life at exceptional risk, the burden on the would-be cloners seems clear: they must make a compelling case why the procedure should not be avoided altogether. iv
Reflections on the purpose and meaning of seeking consent support this point. Why, after all, does society insist upon consent as an essential principle of the ethics of scientific research? Along with honoring the free will of the subject, we insist on consent to protect the weak and the vulnerable, and in particular to protect them from the powerful. It would therefore be morally questionable, at the very least, to choose to impose potentially grave harm on an individual, especially in the very act of giving that individual life. Giving existence to a human being does not grant one the right to maim or harm that human being in research.
3. Problems of Exploitation of Women and Just Distribution of Risk
Cloning-to-produce-children may also lead to the exploitation of women who would be called upon to donate oocytes. Widespread use of the techniques of cloning-to-produce-children would require large numbers of eggs. Animal models suggest that several hundred eggs may be required before one attempt at cloning can be successful. The required oocytes would have to be donated, and the process of making them available would involve hormonal treatments to induce superovulation. If financial incentives are offered, they might lead poor women especially to place themselves at risk in this way (and might also compromise the voluntariness of their "choice" to make donations). Thus, research on cloning-to-produce-children could impose disproportionate burdens on women, particularly low-income women.
4. Conclusion
These questions of the ethics of research – particularly the issue of physical safety – point clearly to the conclusion that cloning-to-produce-children is unacceptable. In reaching this conclusion, we join the National Bioethics Advisory Commission and the National Academy of Sciences. But we go beyond the findings of those distinguished bodies in also pointing to the dangers that will always be inherent in the very process of trying to make cloning-to-produce-children safer. On this ground, we conclude that the problem of safety is not a temporary ethical concern. It is rather an enduring moral concern that might not be surmountable and should thus preclude work toward the development of cloning techniques to produce children. In light of the risks and other ethical concerns raised by this form of human experimentation, we therefore conclude that cloning-to-produce-children should not be attempted.
For some people, the discussion of ethical objections to cloning-to-produce-children could end here. Our society's established codes and practices in regard to human experimentation by themselves offer compelling reasons to oppose indefinitely attempts to produce a human child by cloning. But there is more to be said.
First, many people who are repelled by or opposed to the prospect of cloning human beings are concerned not simply or primarily because the procedure is unsafe. To the contrary, their objection is to the use of a perfected cloning technology and to a society that would embrace or permit the production of cloned children. The ethical objection based on lack of safety is not really an objection to cloning as such. Indeed, it may in time become a vanishing objection should people be allowed to proceed – despite insuperable ethical objections such as the ones we have just offered – with experiments to perfect the technique.v Should this occur, the ethical assessment of cloning-to-produce-children would need to address itself to the merits (and demerits) of cloning itself, beyond the safety questions tied to the techniques used to produce cloned children. Thus, anticipating the possibility of a perfected and usable technology, it is important to delineate the case against the practice itself.
Moreover, because the Council is considering cloning within a broad context of present and projected techniques that can affect human procreation or alter the genetic makeup of our children, it is important that we consider the full range and depth of ethical issues raised by such efforts.
How should these issues be raised, and within what moral framework? Some, but by no means all, of the deepest moral concerns connected to human cloning could be handled by developing a richer consideration of the ethics of human experimentation. Usually – and regrettably – we apply the ethical principles governing research on human subjects in a utilitarian spirit, weighing benefits versus harms, and moreover using only a very narrow notion of "harm." The calculus that weighs benefits versus harms too often takes stock only of bodily harm or violations of patient autonomy, though some serious efforts have been made in recent years to consider broader issues. In addition, we often hold a rather narrow view of what constitutes "an experiment." Yet cloning-to-produce-children would be a "human experiment" in many senses, and risks of bodily harm and inadequate consent do not exhaust the ways in which cloning might do damage. As we have described, cloning-to-produce-children would be a biological experiment – with necessary uncertainties about the safety of the technique and the possibility of physical harm. But it would also be an experiment in human procreation – substituting asexual for sexual reproduction and treating children not as gifts but as our self-designed products. It would be an experiment in human identity – creating the first human beings to inherit a genetic identity lived in advance by another. It would be an experiment in genetic choice and design – producing the first children whose entire genetic makeup was selected in advance. It would be an experiment in family and social life – altering the relationships within the family and between the generations, for example, by turning "mothers" into "twin sisters" and "grandparents" into "parents," and by having children asymmetrically linked biologically to only one parent. And it would represent a social experiment for the entire society, insofar as the society accepted, even if only as a minority practice, this unprecedented and novel mode of producing our offspring.
By considering these other ways in which cloning would constitute an experiment, we could enlarge our analysis of the ethics of research with human subjects to assess possible nonbodily harms of cloning-to-produce-children. But valuable as this effort might be, we have not chosen to proceed in this way. Not all the important issues can be squeezed into the categories of harms and benefits. People can be mistreated or done an injustice whether they know it or not and quite apart from any experienced harm. Important human goods can be traduced, violated, or sacrificed without being registered in anyone's catalogue of harms. The form of bioethical inquiry we are attempting here will make every effort not to truncate the moral meaning of our actions and practices by placing them on the Procrustean bed of utilitarianism. To be sure, the ethical principles governing human research are highly useful in efforts to protect vulnerable individuals against the misconduct or indifference of the powerful. But a different frame of reference is needed to evaluate the human meaning of innovations that may affect the lives and humanity of everyone, vulnerable or not.
Of the arguments developed below, some are supported by most Council Members, while other arguments are shared by only some Members. Even among the arguments they share, different Members find different concerns to be weightier. Yet we all believe that the arguments presented in the sections that follow are worthy of consideration in the course of trying to assess fully the ethical issues involved. We have chosen to err on the side of inclusion rather than exclusion of arguments because we acknowledge that concerns now expressed by only a few may turn out in the future to be more important than those now shared by all. Our fuller assessment begins with an attempt to fathom the deepest meaning of human procreation and thus necessarily the meaning of raising children. Our analysis will then move onto questions dealing with the effects of cloning on individuals, family life, and society more generally.
B. The Human Context: Procreation and Child-Rearing
Were it to take place, cloning-to-produce-children would represent a challenge to the nature of human procreation and child-rearing. Cloning is, of course, not only a means of procreation. It is also a technology, a human experiment, and an exercise of freedom, among other things. But cloning would be most unusual, consequential, and most morally important as a new way of bringing children into the world and a new way of viewing their moral significance.
In Chapter One we outlined some morally significant features of human procreation and raised questions about how these would be altered by human cloning. We will now attempt to deepen that analysis, and begin with the salient fact that a child is not made, but begotten. Procreation is not making but the outgrowth of doing. A man and woman give themselves in love to each other, setting their projects aside in order to do just that. Yet a child results, arriving on its own, mysterious, independent, yet the fruit of the embrace.vi Even were the child wished for, and consciously so, he or she is the issue of their love, not the product of their wills; the man and woman in no way produce or choose a particular child, as they might buy a particular car. Procreation can, of course, be assisted by human ingenuity (as with IVF). In such cases, it may become harder to see the child solely as a gift bestowed upon the parents' mutual self-giving and not to some degree as a product of their parental wills. Nonetheless, because it is still sexual reproduction, the children born with the help of IVF begin – as do all other children – with a certain genetic independence of their parents. They replicate neither their fathers nor their mothers, and this is a salutary reminder to parents of the independence they must one day grant their children and for which it is their duty to prepare them.
Gifts and blessings we learn to accept as gratefully as we can. Products of our wills we try to shape in accord with our desires. Procreation as traditionally understood invites acceptance, rather than reshaping, engineering, or designing the next generation. It invites us to accept limits to our control over the next generation. It invites us even – to put the point most strongly – to think of the child as one who is not simply our own, our possession. Certainly, it invites us to remember that the child does not exist simply for the happiness or fulfillment of the parents.
To be sure, parents do and must try to form and mold their children in various ways as they inure them to the demands of family life, prepare them for adulthood, and initiate them into the human community. But, even then, it is only our sense that these children are not our possessions that makes such parental nurture which always threatens not to nourish but to stifle the child – safe.
This concern can be expressed not only in language about the relation between the generations but also in the language of equality. The things we make are not just like ourselves; they are the products of our wills, and their point and purpose are ours to determine. But a begotten child comes into the world just as its parents once did, and is therefore their equal in dignity and humanity.
The character of sexual procreation shapes the lives of children as well as parents. By giving rise to genetically new individuals, sexual reproduction imbues all human beings with a sense of individual identity and of occupying a place in this world that has never belonged to another. Our novel genetic identity symbolizes and foreshadows the unique, never-to-be-repeated character of each human life. At the same time, our emergence from the union of two individuals, themselves conceived and generated as we were, locates us immediately in a network of relation and natural affection.
Social identity, like genetic identity, is in significant measure tied to these biological facts. Societies around the world have structured social and economic responsibilities around the relationship between the generations established through sexual procreation, and have developed modes of child-rearing, family responsibility, and kinship behavior that revolve around the natural facts of begetting.
There is much more to be said about these matters, and they are vastly more complicated than we have indicated. There are, in addition, cultural differences in the way societies around the world regard the human significance of procreation or the way children are to be regarded and cared for. Yet we have said enough to indicate that the character and nature of human procreation matter deeply. They affect human life in endless subtle ways, and they shape families and communities. A proper regard for the profundity of human procreation (including child-rearing and parent-child relations) is, in our view, indispensable for a full assessment of the ethical implications of cloning-to-produce-children.
C. Identity, Manufacture, Eugenics, Family, and Society
Beyond the matter of procreation itself, we think it important to examine the possible psychological and emotional state of individuals produced by cloning, the well-being of their families, and the likely effects on society of permitting human cloning. These concerns would apply even if cloning-to-produce-children were conducted on a small scale; and they would apply in even the more innocent-seeming cloning scenarios, such as efforts to overcome infertility or to avoid the risk of genetic disease. Admittedly, these matters are necessarily speculative, for empirical evidence is lacking. Nevertheless, the importance of the various goods at stake justifies trying to think matters through in advance.
Keeping in mind our general observations about procreation, we proceed to examine a series of specific ethical issues and objections to cloning human children: (1) problems of identity and individuality; (2) concerns regarding manufacture; (3) the prospect of a new eugenics; (4) troubled family relations; and (5) effects on society.
1. Problems of Identity and Individuality
Cloning-to-produce-children could create serious problems of identity and individuality. This would be especially true if it were used to produce multiple "copies" of any single individual, as in one or another of the seemingly far-fetched futuristic scenarios in which cloning is often presented to the popular imagination. Yet questions of identity and individuality could arise even in small-scale cloning, even in the (supposedly) most innocent of cases, such as the production of a single cloned child within an intact family. Personal identity is, we would emphasize, a complex and subtle psychological phenomenon, shaped ultimately by the interaction of many diverse factors. But it does seem reasonably clear that cloning would at the very least present a unique and possibly disabling challenge to the formation of individual identity.
Cloned children may experience concerns about their distinctive identity not only because each will be genetically essentially identical to another human being, but also because they may resemble in appearance younger versions of the person who is their "father" or "mother." Of course, our genetic makeup does not by itself determine our identities. But our genetic uniqueness is an important source of our sense of who we are and how we regard ourselves. It is an emblem of independence and individuality. It endows us with a sense of life as a never-before-enacted possibility. Knowing and feeling that nobody has previously possessed our particular gift of natural characteristics, we go forward as genetically unique individuals into relatively indeterminate futures.
These new and unique genetic identities are rooted in the natural procreative process. A cloned child, by contrast, is at risk of living out a life overshadowed in important ways by the life of the "original" – general appearance being only the most obvious. Indeed, one of the reasons some people are interested in cloning is that the technique promises to produce in each case a particular individual whose traits and characteristics are already known. And however much or little one's genotype actually shapes one's natural capacities, it could mean a great deal to an individual's experience of life and the expectations that those who cloned him or her might have. The cloned child may be constantly compared to "the original," and may consciously or unconsciously hold himself or herself up to the genetic twin that came before. If the two individuals turned out to lead similar lives, the cloned person's achievements may be seen as derivative. If, as is perhaps more likely, the cloned person departed from the life of his or her progenitor, this very fact could be a source of constant scrutiny, especially in circumstances in which parents produced their cloned child to become something in particular. Living up to parental hopes and expectations is frequently a burden for children; it could be a far greater burden for a cloned individual. The shadow of the cloned child's "original" might be hard for the child to escape, as would parental attitudes that sought in the child's very existence to replicate, imitate, or replace the "original."
It may reasonably be argued that genetic individuality is not an indispensable human good, since identical twins share a common genotype and seem not to be harmed by it. But this argument misses the context and environment into which even a single human clone would be born. Identical twins have as progenitors two biological parents and are born together, before either one has developed and shown what his or her potential – natural or otherwise – may be. Each is largely free of the burden of measuring up to or even knowing in advance the genetic traits of the other, because both begin life together and neither is yet known to the world. But a clone is a genetic near-copy of a person who is already living or has already lived. This might constrain the clone's sense of self in ways that differ in kind from the experience of identical twins. Everything about the predecessor – from physical height and facial appearance, balding patterns and inherited diseases, to temperament and native talents, to shape of life and length of days, and even cause of death – will appear before the expectant eyes of the cloned person, always with at least the nagging concern that there, notwithstanding the grace of God, go I. The crucial matter, again, is not simply the truth regarding the extent to which genetic identity actually shapes us – though it surely does shape us to some extent. What matters is the cloned individual's perception of the significance of the "precedent life" and the way that perception cramps and limits a sense of self and independence.
2. Concerns regarding Manufacture
The likely impact of cloning on identity suggests an additional moral and social concern: the transformation of human procreation into human manufacture, of begetting into making. By using the terms "making" and "manufacture" we are not claiming that cloned children would be artifacts made altogether "by hand" or produced in factories. Rather, we are suggesting that they would, like other human "products," be brought into being in accordance with some pre-selected genetic pattern or design, and therefore in some sense "made to order" by their producers or progenitors.
Unlike natural procreation – or even most forms of assisted reproduction – cloning-to-produce-children would set out to create a child with a very particular genotype: namely, that of the somatic cell donor. Cloned children would thus be the first human beings whose entire genetic makeup is selected in advance. True, selection from among existing genotypes is not yet design of new ones. But the principle that would be established by human cloning is both far-reaching and completely novel: parents, with the help of science and technology, may determine in advance the genetic endowment of their children. To this point, parents have the right and the power to decide whether to have a child. With cloning, parents acquire the power, and presumably the right, to decide what kind of a child to have. Cloning would thus extend the power of one generation over the next – and the power of parents over their offspring – in ways that open the door, unintentionally or not, to a future project of genetic manipulation and genetic control.
Of course, there is no denying that we have already taken steps in the direction of such control. Preimplantation genetic diagnosis of embryos and prenatal diagnosis of fetuses – both now used to prevent the birth of individuals carrying genes for genetic diseases – reflect an only conditional acceptance of the next generation. With regard to positive selection for desired traits, some people already engage in the practice of sex selection, another example of conditional acceptance of offspring. But these precedents pale in comparison to the degree of control provided by cloning and, in any case, do not thereby provide a license to proceed with cloning. It is far from clear that it would be wise to proceed still farther in our attempts at control.
The problem with cloning-to-produce-children is not that artificial technique is used to assist reproduction. Neither is it that genes are being manipulated. We raise no objection to the use of the coming genetic technologies to treat individuals with genetic diseases, even in utero – though there would be issues regarding the protection of human subjects in research and the need to find boundaries between therapy and so-called enhancement (of this, more below). The problem has to do with the control of the entire genotype and the production of children to selected specifications.
Why does this matter? It matters because human dignity is at stake. In natural procreation, two individuals give life to a new human being whose endowments are not shaped deliberately by human will, whose being remains mysterious, and the open-endedness of whose future is ratified and embraced. Parents beget a child who enters the world exactly as they did – as an unmade gift, not as a product. Children born of this process stand equally beside their progenitors as fellow human beings, not beneath them as made objects. In this way, the uncontrolled beginnings of human procreation endow each new generation and each new individual with the dignity and freedom enjoyed by all who came before.
Most present forms of assisted reproduction imitate this natural process. While they do begin to introduce characteristics of manufacture and industrial technique, placing nascent human life for the first time in human hands, they do not control the final outcome. The end served by IVF is still the same as natural reproduction-the birth of a child from the union of gametes from two progenitors. Reproduction with the aid of such techniques still implicitly expresses a willingness to accept as a gift the product of a process we do not control. In IVF children emerge out of the same mysterious process from which their parents came, and are therefore not mere creatures of their parents.
By contrast, cloning-to-produce-children – and the forms of human manufacture it might make more possible in the future – seems quite different. Here, the process begins with a very specific final product in mind and would be tailored to produce that product. Even were cloning to be used solely to remedy infertility, the decision to clone the (sterile) father would be a decision, willy-nilly, that the child-to-be should be the near-twin of his "father." Anyone who would clone merely to ensure a "biologically related child" would be dictating a very specific form of biological relation: genetic virtual identity. In every case of cloning-to-produce-children, scientists or parents would set out to produce specific individuals for particular reasons. The procreative process could come to be seen increasingly as a means of meeting specific ends, and the resulting children would be products of a designed manufacturing process, products over whom we might think it proper to exercise "quality control." Even if, in any given case, we were to continue to think of the cloned child as a gift, the act itself teaches a different lesson, as the child becomes the continuation of a parental project. We would learn to receive the next generation less with gratitude and surprise than with control and mastery.
One possible result would be the industrialization and commercialization of human reproduction. Manufactured objects become commodities in the marketplace, and their manufacture comes to be guided by market principles and financial concerns. When the "products" are human beings, the "market" could become a profoundly dehumanizing force. Already there is commerce in egg donation for IVF, with ads offering large sums of money for egg donors with high SAT scores and particular physical features.
The concerns expressed here do not depend on cloning becoming a widespread practice. The introduction of the terms and ideas of production into the realm of human procreation would be troubling regardless of the scale involved; and the adoption of a market mentality in these matters could blind us to the deep moral character of bringing forth new life. Even were cloning children to be rare, the moral harms to a society that accepted it could be serious.
3. Prospect of a New Eugenics
For some of us, cloning-to-produce-children also raises concerns about the prospect of eugenics or, more modestly, about genetic "enhancement." We recognize that the term "eugenics" generally refers to attempts to improve the genetic constitution of a particular political community or of the human race through general policies such as population control, forced sterilization, directed mating, or the like. It does not ordinarily refer to actions of particular individuals attempting to improve the genetic endowment of their own descendants. Yet, although cloning does not in itself point to public policies by which the state would become involved in directing the development of the human ge
cloningi think it should be allowed because it it cool
fletcher of the funk
Re: cloningIKR ;] your weird ;]
Human CloningHuman cloning is stoopid and horrible! People should not be cloned unless they give permissioin to be cloned. Cloning without consent of the original person should remain illegal.
Would you want to have a clone and not even know???
I wouldn't.
>jazmine Smith
Manila, Phillipines.
Re: Human Cloningi think tha human cloning is a good thing because it takes the attention off me and my sister for being inbreds, we are continuously making babies and i think cloning would be a good alternative.
Re: Human Cloningcan we join in on the inbredation
mixed viewsI believe cloning could be used to benefit the whole human species but at the moment it is just too risky and would result in many lives being lost.
MaybeWell it would be great to clone.Imagine losing your girlfriend and she dies and you just clone her
Re: Maybehaha nice
my opinion.;pi believe cloning is illegal because you mess around with genes and this could harm many people with many deaths.--
Re: my opinion.;pi strongly disagree
Re: my opinioni agree with matt.
I stongry dissagree with you zoya.
Re: my opinion.;pyou are stupid, cloning is great i am a clone and i love it, you are a racist towards clones
Re: my opinion.;pstupid idea
Re: my opinion.;pi reckon that if we keep reaserching cloning that 1 day all these faults will be fixed and that there will be no side effects to cloning
we just need to keep working at it like with everything we do
we'll get there 1 day and cloneing will have no side affects
and that extinct animals will live once again.
hundreds of endanged animals will no longer be endanged.
were basically making up for all we have done to all those poor animals that we caused to be endanged
Do people have the right to reproduce?
only if you are an elephant
cloning is not rightit should not be done because god made one of us and everyone of us he made special. so i dont think we should make the mistake and go and mess around with nature. if god really wanted only two or more of the same person then everyone would have a natrual twin. but scince he made us special then i dont think the we should do any of it. so i think it is wrong to do stuff like that.(i am only 15 and i am putting those scientitis to shame)(my teacher said that)
Re: cloning is not rightWhile your opinion is respectable, please learn how to actually spell and use proper grammer before "putting scientists to shame".
Re: cloning is not rightthing is ... god dont exist my friend :)
Re: cloning is not righti totally agree with you God is good isn"t he
Re: cloning is not rightFirst and foremost, the fact that you are using the "religious argument" is an invalid argument that doesn't back up your opinion. The United States Constitution gives us express rights to believe whatever we want when it comes to religion and therefore I could say that my half-chicken, half-monkey god disapproves of cloning and it would be just as valid of an argument. You are entitled to your beliefs and I respect you for that but it doesn't mean that you can use it as a crutch when arguing such a diverse and controversial subject.
Second, in my opinion, you are not going to convince anyone with any kind of intelligence that you have a valid point if you are (assumed) too ignorant to check your post for grammatical errors and spelling errors. Lack of capitalization and punctuation can make any post look unprofessional and compromise any chance of credentials. Even if you had a good point with cited sources that back up your claim, you portray yourself as an uneducated teenager without the skills to research such a complicated topic (which I do not believe is the case as you wouldn't be reading an article about this to begin with).
When you get to college, writing 121 and 122 focus on being able to effectively argue a point of view whether it is your own opinion or not and being able to find credible sources to back yourself up. I don't mean to be rude or arrogant, just giving my two cents.
I belive in god and heaven but god did not create us we started out like everything else we started out as little organisms called bacteria which grew and evolved until it couldn't evolve any more and here we are...
i agree all these people are saying hes not real but i believe and i always will. Its your opinion but may I just suggest that try reading the bible or listening to verses or going to church. It really does help
cloning is not rightit should not be done because god made one of us and everyone of us he made special. so i dont think we should make the mistake and go and mess around with nature. if god really wanted only two or more of the same person then everyone would have a natrual twin. but scince he made us special then i dont think the we should do any of it. so i think it is wrong to do stuff like that.(i am only 15 and i am putting those scientitis to shame)(my teacher said that)
intresting.i recently did a report and this sight helped me very much. Lailah, I am only 13 but i think that your opinon was amazing. Your opinion helped me form my report (I am against it too), although i am in a different situation, i am jewish, therefor not obliged to be against it. Anyone who is interested in cloning, but likes interesting books, read the YA novel: "My Sister's Keeper" By Judi Picoult. And thanks to everyone again!
booboo
My QuestionWhat do you think about cloning?? Are you for of against or mixed (both, in different ways)???I really want to know...can you please reply me as soon as possible???>>>>>hehe thx a lot.
Re: My Questioni was for cloning before i started to really think about it. Read my sister's keeper by jodi picoult. it really helped when i did my cloning report. now i am against cloning although i wish there was a different way to help those where cloning is the only way to save their lives. hope i helped
Re: My Questionit should not be done because god made one of us and everyone of us he made special. so i dont think we should make the mistake and go and mess around with nature. if god really wanted only two or more of the same person then everyone would have a natrual twin. but scince he made us special then i dont think the we should do any of it. so i think it is wrong to do stuff like that.(i am only 15 and i am putting those scientitis to shame)(my teacher said that)
Cloning is bull . :)
right it so is chus there is nun to do it is like a creepy robot lol :D
yep
its true
its so screamy...im laeelya from indonesia, eighteen years old. despite from the other opinion, i have a funny question.. how do you think if i will meet a person that straightly looks like me but she hasn't normal body..lame.. of course it so bad. and i think the result is still zero about human clone.. its a law breaking action...
re: Reasons Agains CloningDear Dr Dixon
I am a student in Biology (final year of secondary college-newhaven college, australia) doing a research piece on reproductive cloning and i greatly appreciate your thoughts and video. They have helped me out greatly in my research, especially the way you explain cloning and it's effects so well. I strongly agree with the point you make about the emotional impact on a clone. Its impossible to imagine the feeling one would get if they knew they were just a copy of someone else, just a freak of our developments in science, because it has never happened before and hopefully it never will, because then i for one wouldn't be able to stand for it in society.
With all the experiments done and all the repeats you would think that scientists would understand that this technology is still too complicated for us to mess with, there are lots of things we don't know about ourselves, our genetic material and how we function to be able to produce a clone of a human without anything going wrong. Even still if we did, then there would be no way to prevent the negative emotional effects which you have mentioned. Thanks for the giving us readers the opportunity to leave our thoughts, i do have a great deal more, but i am not a great typer and it is getting very late so i will leave it at that.
Regards,
Kyrill Kosaruk
ThanksThanks - really interesting comments - do please help others by sharing more of your thoughts here. This is one of the busiest pages on cloning on the web so they will gain a wide audience. I suggest you post longer messages in no more than a couple of paragraphs each for easier reading. With appreciation. Patrick
Re: re: Reasons Against Cloningi completely agree with you, and believe it is a huge risk to clone humans especially with the emotional problems involved.
one more thingIt's me again. I have one more point to make. A little less religious this time, but just as important, I think. There are so many people in this world already, suffering lack of food, shelter, and decent health. Why don't the scientists working on those cloning projects use thier genius to make some sort of super firtalizer, and sell it at a reasonable price to farmers so, although the gas prices are killer, we might have extra for people in 3rd world countries? Or the could come up with some sort of very sturdy material for homes for those people? Something stronger than stone or concrete or metal. Or use all the money thier spending on cloning to look for cures for diseases we can't quite treat yet? That money could have such a better purpose. The research may have benefits, but to get to those benefits, you gotta sacrafice an aweful lot. I also wish people in America would stop buying those super-big homes and spoiling themselves. I'm comfortably middle class and Im doing just fine.
-Lailah
Reasons / arguments against and for human cloningThanks for another interesting post. A huge issue is that cloning is costly and involves great risk for any child cloned (medical problems as we have seen in cloned animals). In my view it would be far better to spend those resources meeting important and urgent needs in our world.
Wow u rite so much
My opinionI'm a bit young to know much about this. I'm only fifteen, but im in a homeschool program which requires a report on this stuff and my opinion. I'm Catholic, so I know I'm obliged to be against it, but it goes further than that. I never really developed a strong opinion untill now, when I read the article on three reasons why it's not a good idea. But I still have to explain the opposing side's argument, and do my best to understand it. But here's the thing; God gave us free will. Some people say that if we weren't supposed to do it, God wouldn't have made it possible. But God doesn't condone murder, and thats possible. He doesn't permit fornication, torture, slavery, or cruelty, but we all know too well that those actions are very possible. The reason we have free will is that God is giving us an opportunity to prove that we love Him and are willing to obey. And that does not include trying to mimic His ability to make new life (except for intermarital sex). How exactly does the soul get into the body? I wouldn't know, non of us would. But if you're artaficially cloning, don't you think the person would be a little less normal? Not normal as in like everybody else, but not normal as in a direct creation of God. We're not worthy of the place science offers us. Although much of science is useful and wonderful, not all of it abides by the Laws of God (birth-control, fancy ways for killing people, etc.). And so even though I'm still just a kid and not exactly expected to meddle in this sort of thing, I do not believe that human cloning is a good, virtuous, or just thing. Cloning pigs and cows is one thing; God gave us contol (to an extent, a very small one, if you know how stubborn my cat is) over them: they are here for our purpose and companionship (USE DONT ABUSE). So as far as I'm concerned, making another piggy is just fine, as long as you don't make some super intelligent one that'll breed an army and try to take over the world (I doubt this situation is very possible, but i threw it in 'cos the idea of Tyrannical pigs cracks me up). But Humans are the race chosen by God to have the intelligence superior to all other animals, and it only goes so far. You just can't do God's job. Can you picture that? Humans trying to do a vital part of God's job. Can you say "super-huge disaster"?
Thanks for listening, yours,
Lailah
Reasons / arguments against and for human cloningDear Lailah, Thanks so much for your interesting and well written post. You make many points. I cannot with 11 million users of my pages / youtube videos answer in detail but I really hope (other visitors please note) that you will see many replies here so keep a note of the page. I had a separately human cloning bulletin board which had 200,000 messages read and 20,000 posts but got deleted accidentally so am keen to rebuild a human cloning debate here.
Reply to "My Opinion"Wow, thank you very much for your insight on this issue Lailah. Like you i am currently doing a report on cloning and hearing someone else's opinion opinion on the issue greatly helps my work.
Thank You,
Kyrill
Re: My opinionum see here the thing i am doing a project to and i have pro clone so i am for it and ur reasoons suck
Re: My opinionWow... I can't help but agree with you!! I mean, God gave us our agency for a reason, but one day we will all be held accountable for everything that we ever did, and if we did well, then great!!! But if we find out that some of the things that we did were not O.K., well then...
This view on the subject of human cloning has helped me to better write my report, and as I believe that there is opposition in all things, there will always be people who will do anything they can in order to get power, money, fame, etc.
Thank you Lailah!!!