The Moral Issues Surrounding Human Cloning

Click to view image

The Moral Issues Surrounding Human Cloning

Editorial

Brittni Cebulak

      Human cloning – the exact replication of another person. It sounds like something directly out of a sci-fi movie, right? However, it may not be as impossible as it seems...but it is something not openly attempted because of the multiple ethical issues surrounding the subject. Both the United Nations and the Roman Catholic Church are against the prospect of human cloning, and the practice is banned in the United States. Conversely, there are some groups that believe that human cloning could be beneficial to society (for example: therapeutic cloning, which involves cloning cells from an adult for use in medicine and research, and reproductive cloning, which would involve directly creating cloned humans).

     Still, no matter how cloning may benefit society, I honestly do not think that it would be right for scientists to make it common practice. It would make life even more complicated and full of many gray areas; nothing would be concrete, and nothing would be absolute. Cloning would tear apart families and bring about confusion in society. For example, how could a child understand who his/her real mother was if she was a clone? The two mothers would be genetically the same, but would they really be the exact same individual in personality? It is those kinds of ethical issues that prevent scientists from actively taking part in human cloning.

    It is within my firm belief that the human race is meant to be left as it is, and scientists should not attempt to alter it by making more people out of one person. Doing so would defeat the whole purpose of individuality and being unique in your existence. Some would argue from a religious standpoint that it is not morally correct for scientists to “play God” and attempt to create a human being synthetically. However, since that issue is controversial, my argument would be that cloning would go against the natural order of nature and the Circle of Life on Earth. Similarly, you could say that it would be going against the Laws of Nature to engineer a human being; it simply is not natural.

     Another issue to think about is the prejudices that may be inflicted on those individuals who were cloned if cloning became a common practice in society. Would regular, everyday people discriminate against those individuals that had been cloned from a pre-existing human being? Would a cloned person be offered the same opportunities as a “regular” person? Moreover, one must also consider the feelings that one may experience as being a clone. Would they feel fake, as if they were not actually a real person? Would they feel unnatural? Would they feel like outcasts? Those are all things that scientists should consider before they play with their test-tubes. 

     In conclusion, the cloning of human beings should not even be considered in our society. It would be cruel, unnatural, and unnecessary. We are already becoming an increasingly over-populated planet, so I think it would be safe to say that another means of reproduction is highly redundant. Human cloning should remain something of the sci-fi movies, TV shows, and novels; making it mainstream would only cause unnecessary problems in the general public. Furthermore, if we avoid cloning we will also avoid inflicting emotional, maybe even physical, pain among those unfortunate embryonic cells that had the potential of being developed into a human clone.

http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/physician-resources/medical-science/genetics-molecular-medicine/related-policy-topics/stem-cell-research/human-cloning.page