Cloning for Perfection or Damnation – English Essay
Cloning has been a debate for years and is still a big question today. It is a very complicated process that many people believe is us playing god. People who support cloning believe it is a good way to perfect the human
race. Although I feel both sides are extreme, I think that cloning should be allowed but only if the government approves it so we can satisfy both sides.
To understand why cloning is important to scientists; you must understand the origins of where the idea of cloning came from. It is said that that it was started in 1952 when geneticists removed a nucleus from an embryonic frog, placed it into an egg cell, and a frog was hatched from the egg cell with the embryonic nucleus. (Human Cloning)
First glimpse the world had of cloning is with the sheep named Dolly who was the first live animal to be cloned. Common question asked is what is cloning? Well the answer is quite simple; it is an asexual process that replicates genetic makeup to the youth brought from the womb. The result is an animal that looks exactly like the original. A common myth for people who don’t know much about cloning is that the clone will be exactly like the individual whose genetic code it came from. The only similarities are the genetic makeup. Everything else in the organism is different. Say if I were to be cloned, my clone would be completely different than I because he would have a different upbringing. He would not have the same childhood experiences I had. So in other words, you are creating another person that looks like you but may be completely different. It would be like raising a child, they may share some genetic code with you but they are not exactly like you. Psychology has a profound effect on cloning. Environmental factors play a huge role in how someone turns out. You may be a completely calm individual who is always courteous and believes in chivalry. If certain aspects of your clones upbringing brought him to feel anxiety, then he or she would be a completely different person. Your clone may become a promiscuous crude person that only believes in satisfying themselves rather than serve the common good.
Arguments among the debate of cloning are quite simple. The argument for those against cloning is how we know that the clone’s life will be as long as ours. Simple answer is that we do not know. How can we know if protestors do not let us try doing so? The only way to be sure is to of course let us try it. Experiments are the only way of letting us know if something works. If it does work, then we will the public decide. Debates will still rage on but if we decide on whether or not to legalize cloning, then it will mark a new era for our country.
Another common nemesis to the cloning of certain things is that the cloning could not be healthy for the world. Certain cloned fruit or vegetables could carry very negative effects on us if we eat them. They could cause us to have new diseases that doctors would never know the cure to. So this means that cloning could cause certain illnesses to outbreak through the world. The last thing the world needs is an epidemic that could spread throughout the world. I guess people feel that the world does not need any more incurable diseases.
Religious views that oppose closing are many. One of the views that believe cloning violates god is that when men creates a child through genetics, we are violating the image of god. It also makes children an object or manipulate but not a gift from god. The church also feels that if we are able to make clones, that we would treat them less than equal and we would sacrifice them so we could transplant organs and such.” The church argues that just ends do not justify immoral means.” (Human Cloning: Religious and Ethical Debate) Another common argument is that we as humans have distinct souls and they do not believe that we could clone the human soul with the human. “Jewish people think that man has a partnership with god and that we as men must care for mankind as it grows to nurture it like Adam and Eve did with the garden.” (Human Cloning: Religious and Ethical Debate)
Ethical concerns are also not helping the argument against cloning. People believe that with our technology of today does not allow us to securely clone someone and that there will be harm to the embryo and the clone will age faster. There are also the psychological factors that come into play. People believe that the child will feel constrained to the future of their gene donors’ life. The quality of parenting and family life may be degraded because instead of parents loving their children merely for the fact that they are their child will not be enough for the parents. Instead, the parents will love them for how well they meet expectations. All ethical concerns are understandable.
I feel that cloning would benefit the world. I believe leaders that could have done well for the world could be cloned and possibly could continue their past-life’s legacy. Maybe if we cloned Martin Luther King, we would know his potential influence on society. Many people in history could have done such great things if they had not died, maybe cloning would reawaken the potential will they would bring upon the world. If we were to clone Albert Einstein, I believe we could create something that would terrify the rest of the world and we would be in power because of the fact that the world would be terrified by our power. Although clones would have a stigmatization by society, the worth of their presence would be far greater.
One of the many things that certain people back cloning with is that we could control whether or not our offspring would have certain diseases or recessive genes. I guess you could look at it with the angle that we could perfect the human race. We could very well get rid of disease and certain common ailments brought by certain genes like baldness. Scientists believe that we could create the ideal race for the future.
“At the current time the risks associated with the cloning of humans are so great that virtually all people agree that there should be a prohibition on such experimentation at the moment.” (Religious and Ethical Debate) This of course makes a lot of sense because we don’t know the harm that cloning could have on a child. It was 277 tries before the scientists who cloned the lamb named Dolly before they had a healthy lamb. This experiment made it a point to the scientists that there would be more birth defects and failures would be expected during experimentation. This doesn’t help the argument of the people that want us to be able to clone humans.
Arguments against ethical concerns are quite formidable. “Supporters may also argue that human clones will have the advantage of knowing what they are good at early in life.” (Human Cloning: Religious and Ethical Debate) With the argument of children not being loved by their parents for the child’s sake is contended with the argument that the child will be loved unconditionally. For infertile couples, the child that they will attain through cloning will be loved as warmly as if they had the baby themselves. All ethical arguments do not seem so strong now.
With both debates in mind, government control over cloning sounds like a good idea, so we as the public could have a glimpse of the potential of cloning. We could see how cloning would benefit the world. The public would find out which side of the argument was true on certain debates. Maybe there is a chance that we could get rid of aids or other types of diseases that cannot be cured. By doing this, we would find out if by eliminating certain diseases, cloning would bring even more dangerous illnesses than we got rid of. Government regulation of cloning I think would benefit society because I believe the curiosity that we humans have for what could come is too great for us to ban cloning forever. Knowledge that we could attain about our race is unlimited. We could find new things about the human race that no one has ever discovered. We could tap into certain brain potentials that otherwise could not be manipulated. We could make people have higher brain activity and IQ, so they can help benefit the world through other sciences and make discoveries that we haven’t. Cloning can open so many windows for us and many people believe that pioneering into this branch of science is the right thing to do.
Both sides are really extreme, and to allow government to regulate cloning experiments is the right thing to do to satisfy everybody. Cloning I think at the moment is a very sensitive issue for many people because people are so entwined with their religious beliefs that they do not see the potential cloning has for us. Although cloning isn’t really going anywhere at the moment, in a few years I believe that we will see more successful experiments in the future. Dolly is the most recent success of the cloning team around the world but soon we will find more groundbreaking experiments.
Works Cited
“Human Cloning: Religious and Ethical Debate.” 04. Mar. 2005.
“Human Cloning.’ Bradford, Jenny. 04. March. 2005.