"Life is a creation, not a commodity" Human Cloning

“Life is a creation, not a commodity” – President George W. Bush 2007

 

 

            Most people would agree that having multiple copies of themselves walking around town is not their ideal picture of society. Civilization thrives off diversity and multiple cultures coming together and living as one. Every person is unique in his or her own way and by cloning people, not only are you taking away individuality but you are repealing identity. It is important that society remains diverse and different so people will strive to compromise and encourage cultural boundaries. There are many issues that arise when human cloning is addressed and all issues end up concluding that this scientific advancement is extremely unethical and should be stopped immediately. Human cloning poses so many problems that our generation is not ready for and I would be surprised to hear if any generation will ever be ready for “man creating man.” Following President George W. Bush’s speech about banning human cloning, he started his speech with “All of us here today believe in the promise of modern medicine. We’re hopeful about where science may take us and we are also here because we believe in the principles of ethical medicine. As we seek to improve human life, we must always preserve human dignity; therefore, we must prevent human cloning by stopping it before it starts” (1). President Bush stresses the need to stop the human cloning process before scientists start making huge advancements in medical technology. The morality of human cloning needs to be reevaluated, reconsidered, and more importantly banned.

            First I will supply some background information about cloning. Human cloning is the laboratory production of individuals who are genetically identical to another human being. Cloning is achieved by putting the genetic material from a donor into a woman’s egg, which has had its nucleus removed. As a result the new, cloned embryo is an identical copy of only the donor. The debate today mostly concerns reproductive cloning and research cloning. Reproductive cloning is creating a cloned embryo and putting it in a woman with the goal of creating a child. Research cloning involves the creation of cloned human embryos, which are then destroyed to derive stem cells. Cloning procedures started in animals in 1997 with Dolly the sheep, who was the first successfully cloned mammal. Since then, cloning technology has enabled scientists to generate mouse, cattle, goat, pig, deer, rabbit, cat, mule, and horse clones. Although these technological advances sound promising, the odds of perfect clones are limited. For every one hundred experiments only one, two, or if lucky, perhaps three appear to produce a viable offspring in surrogate mothers (2). If only two or three out of one hundred experiments produce a perfect clone of an animal, just imagine what the public would say about two or three perfect humans cloned out of one hundred experiments. This statistic just has unethical written all over it and would more than likely result in public outrage that would probably jeopardize the advancement of stem cell research. “We live in a time of tremendous medical progress. A little more than a year ago, scientists first cracked the human genetic code, one of the most important advances in scientific history. Already scientists are developing diagnostic tools so each of us can know our risk of disease and act to prevent them” (1).  The point is, science is always advancing and knowledge is always changing. Cloning is a huge medical advance that needs to be stopped now because it could very well be the next scientific breakthrough that takes science and ethics too far. Research cloning pushes the medical boundary by contradicting the most fundamental principle of medical ethics “no human life should be exploited or extinguished for the benefit of another. Research cloning basically means we would grow humans for their organs then dispose of them. How does this even begin to seem ethical? By allowing research cloning, society would be taking a step towards a future of humans being grown for spare body parts and children engineered to custom specifications. This idea conflicts not only with medical ethics but religious beliefs and morals.

            To produce a baby that is yours and to hold it in your arms, knowing you made this beautiful life out of passion and love; nothing can compare to the feeling of having your own child. How would you feel if your baby was manufactured to look just like you, or was a leftover from a pervious experiment? It would take away from the miracle of childbirth and the beauty of creation. God is viewed as having a helping hand when creating a baby. God supposedly has a plan for every human and by making man “manmade,” it takes away from the religious aspect of life that comforts so many people. Society wouldn’t be natural and unique; people would just become another commodity being sold along with the appearance and genes of your choice. The beauty of creation is partially the mystery of the new individual concerning his or her appearance, genes, personality etc. A person should not be chosen like clothing from a catalog, a person should be created by people who are in love with the assistance of God who is responsible for the natural beauty the world exhibits.

            Although there are two kinds of human cloning (reproductive and research/therapeutic), both should be banned. The problems with reproductive cloning stem from the fact that there is no guarantee that the first cloned humans will be normal and the fetus will suffer from some disorder not detectable by ultrasound. Dolly, the sheep that was successively cloned, was only expected to live for five years, which is shorter than the normal life span of eleven years. So it’s possible to say that this type of cloning will have the same affect on humans. Also concerning Dolly, the sheep was conceived using an ewe’s egg and a cell from another ewe’s body, which means no semen from a ram was used; therefore, if this technique were perfected in humans, there would be no need for men. Not to mention that diversity will deplete rapidly and emotions would be affected because there would be no solid or natural relationships (3). Moving on to research/therapeutic cloning, problems still exist that limit the promise of this procedure. First of all stem cells are needed to start this process and it takes one hundred eggs (if you’re lucky) to produce a useable stem cell line. This means that if a cure for diabetes is found, it would take 1.5 billion eggs to cure fifteen million Americans who have diabetes. The eggs would have to be harvested from women, which is “painful, costly and unreliable” (4). By needing women’s eggs for research and stem cells for therapeutic cloning, women are now marketed in a way that is definitely unethical. The exploitation of women’s bodies would just create more issues than society knows what to do with and a mass market for women’s eggs would be created. It only seems logical for nature to take its course and humans should reproduce on their own time for the right reasons. Harvesting eggs, depleting diversity, creating disorders, killing off the male gender etc. just doesn’t seem like enough to agree to proceed with human cloning. There needs to be a better reason than “we should clone humans because we can.” Cloning is unethical and it completely defies Christianity, medical ethics, and society’s native morals. Human cloning should be banned completely before any significant advances surface.