Human Cloning, Is It Ethical?
To start off, I would like to explain a few important terms, such as cloning & human cloning. Cloning, as defined by The Report of the President Council on Bioethics, is a form of reproduction in which offspring result not from the chance union of egg & sperm (sexual reproduction), but from the deliberate replication of the genetic makeup of another single individual (asexual reproduction). Human cloning is the asexual production of a new human organism that is, at all stages of development, genetically virtually identical to a currently existing or previously existing human being. It would be accomplished by introducing the nuclear material of a human somatic cell (donor) into an oocyte (egg) whose own nucleus has been removed or inactivated, yielding a product that has a human genetic constitution virtually identical to the donor of the somatic cell (this procedure is known as “somatic cell nuclear transfer,” or “SCNT”). To show where cloning started we need to go back to the nineteenth century writings of Thomas Robert Malthus, who wrote that “the population of humans tends to exceed available resources.” Charles Darwin also suggested, “That the generation of enormous numbers of individuals played a role in evolution.” In 1952, Drs. Robert Briggs and Thomas King, who were working at the Institute for Cancer Research in Philadelphia, first used the term “nuclear transplantation” in regard to animal cloning. Human cloning filtered into public thoughts in the 1960’s, and wasn’t thought of in fear but as funny (comical). In 1966, Joshua Lederberg, wrote an article in the American Naturalist, detailing advantages to human cloning and other forms of genetic engineering. A year later he had column written in the Washington Post, telling of the prospect of human cloning and the column sparked a public debate. The 1970 publication of Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock, firmly planted human cloning into the public consciousness. In the book, The Road to Dolly and the Path Ahead, by Gina Kolata, “other scientists thought of cloning as kooky, and that serious scientists thought that this would not happen anytime soon. It was thought of as truly fantastic and horrifying at the same time.” In, 1972, Williard Gaylin, a psychiatrist & founder of the Hastings Center, believed...
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