Ethics of cloning
I. Introduction
Every society has their specific views on what is right and what is wrong, which brings us to the question of what is ethical when it comes to cloning especially on humans and animals. Cloning has become a great controversial issue in today’s world where scientists and other people have different views on cloning. Some are hopeful as they believe that through genetic engineering, cloning is our future, giving the potential to save the lives of many people from terrible and deadly diseases. Nevertheless, some people might look at it from the religious point of view and their beliefs and argue that this is playing God, arguing that “only God has created life”. 1 As it can be seen in nature, by looking at single cell twins who have identical genetic material and yet are not the same person. Therefore it is impossible to create a new soul. On the other hand, many fear that it will result in people misusing the power of genetic engineering for purely physical purposes, stating that we may go too far — creating the dreaded "designer babies" whose appearance, IQ, creative talents and athletic ability will have been customized.2 As controversial as cloning is to today’s society, cloning has a great potential benefit within the field of medicine. By using cloning scientist are able to generate stem cells which are cells that haven’t been differentiated into specialized cells, to use for transplants such as replacement of unhealthy cells in an individual whether that be an animal or a human being. However, despite benefits such as transplants, cloning does carry some difficult ethical issues. It rises many questions such as when is it acceptable to use cloning in situations such as when a couple is unable to conceive a baby or when one member of the couple carries the genes for a heritable disease that could affect their offspring? Also, it presents us with issues like what kind of life would the cloned individual have? Wheather he would live like an
Every society has their specific views on what is right and what is wrong, which brings us to the question of what is ethical when it comes to cloning especially on humans and animals. Cloning has become a great controversial issue in today’s world where scientists and other people have different views on cloning. Some are hopeful as they believe that through genetic engineering, cloning is our future, giving the potential to save the lives of many people from terrible and deadly diseases. Nevertheless, some people might look at it from the religious point of view and their beliefs and argue that this is playing God, arguing that “only God has created life”. 1 As it can be seen in nature, by looking at single cell twins who have identical genetic material and yet are not the same person. Therefore it is impossible to create a new soul. On the other hand, many fear that it will result in people misusing the power of genetic engineering for purely physical purposes, stating that we may go too far — creating the dreaded "designer babies" whose appearance, IQ, creative talents and athletic ability will have been customized.2 As controversial as cloning is to today’s society, cloning has a great potential benefit within the field of medicine. By using cloning scientist are able to generate stem cells which are cells that haven’t been differentiated into specialized cells, to use for transplants such as replacement of unhealthy cells in an individual whether that be an animal or a human being. However, despite benefits such as transplants, cloning does carry some difficult ethical issues. It rises many questions such as when is it acceptable to use cloning in situations such as when a couple is unable to conceive a baby or when one member of the couple carries the genes for a heritable disease that could affect their offspring? Also, it presents us with issues like what kind of life would the cloned individual have? Wheather he would live like an