...Human Cloning Table of Contents: Advantages and Disadvantages Human Cloning and Divine Command Theory Human Cloning and Naturalism Human Cloning and Religion Human Cloning and Utilitarianism Human Cloning and Ethical Egoism Human Cloning and Kantianism Advantages and Disadvantages Like any other controversial topic, human cloning has numerous advantages and disadvantages, and based on these, one ought to decide whether to condemn human cloning as ethically right or not. On the one hand, there are several advantages for human cloning. These are mostly medical and political advantages. From a medical point of view, cloning can serve to improve the human condition. As a matter of fact, it provides cures to various diseases. With human cloning legalized, doctors would no longer treat cancer by chemotherapy; they would rather replace the affected cancerous organ by a new cloned one. Another way human cloning can serve to improve the human condition is by improving future generations. Some traits in human beings are unwanted and undesirable and can therefore be genetically dismissed in clones. Thus, future generations will not bear these unwanted characteristics. Furthermore, human cloning can serve to provide solutions to problems such as infertility and aging. Although Human cloning has a good number of advantages, it also has a lot of drawbacks. First of all, human cloning is the act of creating a new human being using technology and not the traditional way. This causes a...
Words: 2326 - Pages: 10
...Additionally, cloning can be seen by opponents as useless. Shanks, in the article “Pet Cloning” says, “Cloning does nothing to improve their environment; it adds no genetic diversity; it requires many surrogates and egg donors, who may be harmed; and it may distract from lower tech but more practical conservation measures”. Opponents will claim that because cloning does not add genetic diversity, it is useless. They claim that it does not improve the environment. In spite of the previous claim, cloning does improve the environment. According to “Cloning”, cloning could be used as a substitute for selective breeding. Selective breeding, which is breeding animals with desirable characteristics to produce offspring with those characteristics,...
Words: 1469 - Pages: 6
...Assignment 1: Biology Article Cinthya Jacobo Professor: Dr. Francie Coblentz Introduction to Biology: SCI115 11/08/2015 The article “Therapeutic Cloning, and stem cell Research” by Gena Smith is about how we can extract stem cells from replicated human embryos and use them for medical and therapeutic purposes. The stems cells are perfect because they are what the article calls “master cells” which with the help of science, can be manipulated to become anything from brain cells to kidney cells. The article also revolves around the amount of controversy over the issue of cloning. The article mostly reviews the medical side of cloning rather than the reproduction side which can one day lead to the cloning of individual people. The article has high hopes for the potential use of cloning stating that “Down the road, scientists believe it will be possible to create complicated structures such as blood vessels, liver tissue, and whole kidneys. In fact, ACT scientists have already succeeded in building tiny cow kidneys that could be used for kidney transplants. It isn't hard to envision, Lanza says, a future where pretty much any kind of organ or tissue could be engineered to replace those damaged by age, injury, or disease.” Overall, this new study of cloning could help clone new body tissues which can help regulate, maintain and potentially replace importance body organs that could then lead to the salvation of millions of lives. According to an article by Norwegian University...
Words: 705 - Pages: 3
...Using Human Cloning for Medical Research The subject of human cloning has many different points of view. The utilization of human cloning for the sake of medical research is a path that we, as guardians of the future, should stand up against in an effort to preserve the human race as we know it today. The topic of cloning has many different terminologies as well as types. What is cloning? Cloning is not limited just to humans but is actually all around us. It exists in nature, animals and humans. Cloning is defined as the creation of a genetically identical copy of an existing human or growing cloned tissue from that individual. This term is generally used to refer to artificial cloning; human clones in the form of identical twins are commonplace, with their cloning occurring during the natural process of reproduction. “Human cloning is the asexual production of a human being whose genetic makeup is nearly identical to that of a currently or previously existing individual” (Chesire et al., 2003, p. 1010). To be successful with cloning, scientists utilize and create “generic” cells that that have the ability to make exact duplicates or copies of themselves indefinitely. This process is known as “stem cell research.” Stem cells are a key element of the different types of cloning and will impact advances in helping to cure many different types of diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, spinal cord injury, heart disease, stroke, arthritis, and cancer. Before...
Words: 2313 - Pages: 10
...Medical Ethics PHL 399 Summary # 3 Jeannie Taylor The topics encountered for this week’s readings involved stem cells, cloning of animals, the debate of human cloning, and gene therapy. Some terms that were new to me included: nascent, which basically means to be born; hubris which means full of pride; meliorist, which is a human’s effect on societal improvement; and the term despotism, meaning complete power or authority. In the reading on the President’s Council on Bioethics the council agreed that reproductive cloning was unacceptable. However it was not unanimous on therapeutic cloning. Majority of the council recommended a four year moratorium on research cloning and the remaining members recommended regulations of cloned embryos in research. A moral case for cloning for biomedical research is to provide possibilities of treating diseases. Research is limited to fourteen day old embryos that would be created to provide a good service for life and medicine. A moral case against cloning refers to embryos being treated as raw material solely to fulfill our own needs. There is also great concern of possibly causing harm to society by crossing reproduction margins and/or ruin to nascent human life. The four year moratorium hopes to provide some firm policies on cloning and allow time for a well researched and judicious decision to be attained. The central moral issue from the case of Dolly, the cloned sheep, is whether it is morally acceptable to clone...
Words: 1008 - Pages: 5
...Even though there are many ways that cloning can help to improve lives, there are still some people who worry that it could do the opposite. This sparks a debate over the moral and legal issues of cloning, and how it could deprive humans of their lives in certain ways of cloning such as reproductive cloning. They worry that embryos and fetus’ will be grown for their stem cells, which is essential for cloning. "Several countries have enacted legislation to ban human cloning.”(Cloning) as well as “several states have passed their own laws prohibiting such research.”(Cloning) This “raises a number of challenging scientific, legal, philosophical, and ethical issues.”(Cloning) These examples show multiple Government’s views on cloning. And how...
Words: 1296 - Pages: 6
...Cloning is paradigmatic because it signifies both a specific medical technique and the mode of operation of modern technique. As a specific technique it allows the reproduction of biological organisms, including humans. As a mode of operation it signifies the turning of given phenomena into human-induced processes, and in doing so seeks to control, if not outright eliminate, otherwise given differences. In the latter sense, cloning is equally applicable to biological organisms and cultural artifacts, including law. Seen from this perspective the homogenization of international law in the field of biotechnology is a telling case of the cloning of international law. The essay will begin with a science fiction account of cloning through a brief discussion of Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World.17 I will then move to discuss two case studies of genetic regulation, which simultaneously address the problem of cloning and reproduce the problem on a different level. The first concerns human cloning and the 2005 United Nation Declaration on the Human Cloning.18 The second concerns stem-cell research and a more recent decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in the case of Brüstle v. Greenpeace (2011), to impose a blanket prohibition on patenting the outcome of stem-cell research. The two cases represent the growing international governance of biotechnologies. Both regulations set limits on the use of specific biotechnologies either by an outright prohibition of...
Words: 2667 - Pages: 11
...Stem Cell Cloning Research Braden Harrah Marshall University Abstract The term cloning of stem cell is used by scientists to describe many different processes that involve making duplicates of the different types of stem cells. In different types of cases, stem cells are duplicated for scientific study and no new results were found during the experiment of trying to clone stem cells. This led to the experiment that led to the cloning of Dolly the sheep in 1997. It used a cloning technique called that scientist have been trying to memorize and resulted in an animal that was a genetic twin. This technique can also be used to produce a stem cell from which cells called embryonic stem cells could be extracted to use in research into potential therapies for a wide variety of diseases. The diseases they are hopefully cure or give therapeutic help to is Parkinson’s and Alztimers disease. Introduction Stem cell cloning has been the overall climax for scientific research. Stem cell cloning has evolved ever since they found out what stem cells could do if they were cloned properly. Based on my research, the assumption that cloning stem cells can help mankind appear to be true. Throughout my research on cloning of stem cells I got the idea that if stem cells were cloned that they can cure common diseases such as diabetes and Alzheimer’s. They need to practice on getting the cloning down right before even trying it on a human. They want to continue research on how to clone stems...
Words: 2706 - Pages: 11
...helix structure by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953. Surely they would have never imagined what scientists can do with human DNA today. Cloning, gene therapy, stem cell research, and genetically modified foods all began with the discovery of DNA and probably would have been unimaginable in anyone’s eyes in the 1800’s. But scientist’s today are manipulating genes and DNA in an effort to prevent disease, cure disease, and feed the world. History was made on July 5, 1996 when Dolly the sheep was born. She was the first mammal to be cloned from adult DNA. By splitting two-cell embryos apart, scientists were able to produce two genetically identical organisms. Cloning is a process of making genetically identical organisms through non-sexual means. There are three types of cloning, DNA cloning, reproductive cloning, and therapeutic cloning. DNA (or molecular) cloning consists of removing a small piece of the DNA strand and uniting it with a plasmid which reproduces itself to create multiple copies of the same DNA code. The copied DNA can then be grown in a suitable host cell where the recombinant vector can then be reproduced along with the host cell DNA. DNA cloning is typically used in biological experiments and technological applications where large scale protein production is needed. (NRC, 2002) Reproductive cloning is used to create and animal with the same DNA as an existing animal. In a process called somatic cell nuclear transfer the DNA information...
Words: 640 - Pages: 3
...and mesoderm. Adult stem cells are undifferentiated cells, found throughout the body after embryonic development, that multiply by cell division to replenish dying cells and regenerate damaged tissues. Therapeutic cloning is cloning which is performed for the purpose of medical treatment. For example, it could theoretically be used to grow a replacement organ, to generate skin for a burn victim, or to create nerve cells for someone suffering from brain damage or a neurological condition. Therapeutic cloning is closely related to reproductive cloning, in which a copy of an organism is produced, but the two have very different end goals. The advantage to therapeutic cloning in medical treatment is that it would allow doctors to grow replacements for missing and damaged body parts for their patients. This would eliminate organ and tissue shortages, ensuring that every patient who required something like a new liver or new kidneys could get what he or she needed. There are some definite ethical concerns with therapeutic cloning. For people who do not share these beliefs, many types of cloning are still fraught with ethical problems, ranging from questions about how accessible such techniques are to the general public to concerns that problems might arise with cloned tissue which will only be apparent after years of use. Embryonic-like cells have been found in umbilical cord blood. Stem...
Words: 417 - Pages: 2
...Some argue that this process can decrease or even eliminate many serious genetic diseases. However, others also argue that bad medical conditions may also be passed onto the new organism that came from the original organism. A common claim is that it is unnatural, but this argument rests on nature being good. Scientists argue that diseases, illnesses, and premature death are also a part of nature, making it not perfectly good. Others also say that this does not consider the consent of future generations, but neither does normal sexual reproduction since genetic makeup is random anyway. • Personal Opinion Genetic engineering for plants and animals is an innovative idea to get rid of disorders from these organisms. Although, performing this process in humans for medical purposes may be helpful, it should not be used for personal preferences. If one wishes to perform genetic engineering because he or she prefers someone to have different coloured hair or any other miscellaneous characteristics, it should be discouraged because this is close to playing with divine control and goes askew with morals. The research for genetic engineering should be continued, but it should be under strict watch...
Words: 1227 - Pages: 5
...The Next Generation of Cloning Hundreds of countries around the world are scrambling to ban human cloning, but scientists are convinced cloning can be useful in the near future. Cloning is making a replica of an organism or a cell, a copy of a human or mammal and making two or more of them. There have been a majority of people that have appealed to cloning and whether human beings should not be cloned nor should cloning be used. There has been many reasons for whether cloning should be allowed or not allowed. The heated debate over human cloning has changed how society views human life. This issue is dividing American society. Many argue that cloning is risky, unsafe, and can be harmful to mankind. Others contend cloning to be beneficial and...
Words: 1781 - Pages: 8
...Until recently, scientists made a significant headway in stem cell research by the advancement of technology. As a result, the idea of cloning became a current issue. Initially, the idea of animal cloning was carried out based upon both the financial and technological inadequacy of the human cloning progress. Attempts to clone the Dolly the Sheep, accomplished in February 1997 by the research team at the Roslin Institute, even if the clone grew abnormally large and had certain diseases (“Dolly The Sheep”). When scientists, indicated that they began to study intensively for human cloning; opponents of human cloning imposed serious sanctions against cloning practices. After a while, as stated in an article in The New York Times, on November 26, 2001, the first cloned human embryo was released to the public by the company, called Advanced Cell Technology (Kolata). However, the ethical dimension...
Words: 1262 - Pages: 6
...Human cloning Cloning is an asexual reproduction. Human cloning is the most controversial and hot debate topic of the modern society. Humans have made everything from high tech objects to reaching far space planets in spaceship. Human cloning is creating identical copy of a human. It could also mean to reproduce human cells and tissues. It does not refer to the natural conception and delivery of identical twins. The possibility of human cloning has raised controversies. These ethical concerns have prompted several nations to pass laws regarding human cloning and its legality. There are two commonly discussed types of theoretical human cloning are: therapeutic cloning and reproductive cloning. Therapeutic cloning would involve cloning cells from a human for use in medicine and transplants, and is an active area of research, but is not in medical practice anywhere in the world, as of 2014. Two common methods of therapeutic cloning that are being researched are somatic-cell nuclear transfer and, more recently, pluripotent stem cell induction. On July 5, 1996, the most famous sheep in modern history was born. Ian Wilmut and a group of Scottish scientists announced that they had successfully cloned a sheep named Dolly by the process of somatic-cell nuclear transfer. Reproductive cloning would involve making an entire cloned human, instead of just specific cells or tissues. Scientists have cloned a variety of animals, including mice, sheep, pigs, cows and dogs. In 2006, scientists...
Words: 705 - Pages: 3
...Research Paper Is Cloning Unethical in Today’s Society? "Public hostility to human reproductive cloning may be based on an illogical and transient fear of a new technology." BioNews quoting the British Medical Association The 20th Century saw the most remarkable advancements in the field of science, with the likes of Albert Einstein and Louis Pasteur bestowing mankind with their extraordinary discoveries and inventions. But the concept of cloning, even though very contemporary, has left the world more surprised than it ever was. Cloning is a recent breakthrough in medical science, which has completely revolutionalized the whole concept of biotechnology. The story starts when a group of British scientists cloned Dolly (the most famous sheep in the history of the world), in 1997. In so doing those scientists set off a spark as well, one that has traveled around the globe setting off fierce debates about the possibilities and pitfalls inherent in this brave new world, a world where it is now suddenly and surprisingly possible for scientists to create exact genetic copies of large mammals -- perhaps including, someday, humans. The Adverse Affects of Human Cloning Cloning like any other field of knowledge has its pros and cons. It is basically a man's perpetual ambition to gain power to rule the world and its creatures; be they men or animals. With the cloning technology there is a fear of beginning of this mad race. Therefore, knowledge gained for useful purpose is a blessing but...
Words: 1403 - Pages: 6
