Ethics and Fears and Wonders of Human Cloning

What is a clone? According to the Encyclop?dia Britannica (1979), “a clone is a population of organisms derived originally from a single individual. By definition clones occur only in organisms capable of asexual reproduction and consist of genetically identical individuals”. There has been a successful recorded experiment which regard to cloning, although it was just an animal (a sheep to be more specific), there has been speculations that Human Cloning is not very far away.

Before judging this issue, we should refrain having ignorant thoughts and try to study and understand the issue and detach ourselves from our emotions, religious dogmas and cultural habits/ or entrenched habits. We should see all the possible outcome of this, both positive and negative. Cloning is an issue that cannot be overlooked because everyone will be affected by the decision that would be put upon the issue, lives will either be saved and/or lost. In February 1997, Dolly the sheep, was successfully cloned from an adult sheep.

After this experiment, some people were enthusiastic with this successful discovery, because it may be the key to unlocking the ‘untreatable diseases’ that we are currently facing today. It may give life and/or prolong life, it may be the only solution and the only hope for families that are experiencing a very difficult time in watching their loved ones suffer, and it may be the only guarantee that the human race will not die out in an incurable disease. The author has laid out cases that are suggesting that Human Cloning is needed; I think that some of the cases were purely for the good of the people/masses while some are extremely selfish.

When I stated “good for the people/masses” I meant it in the terms of being egocentric. Being an egocentric, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary is “concerned with the individual rather than society”. Wanting Human Cloning for your own sake but at the same time others would also benefit from it (without real intention) shows egocentrism. On the other hand, I also stated that its “selfish”. What is being selfish? According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary selfish is an “arising from concern with one’s own welfare or advantage in disregard of others”.

You are centered to yourself and you do not care about what might be the affect towards other people. Some people would want Human Cloning to be implemented so they could clone themselves. A question popped into my mind, can you guarantee that your clone would have the same character or behavior as you had? Like Nicholas Coote said “If I have a clone of me, I am still unique as any clone has a consciousness that is not mine” and Shannon Brownies said “You could clone one hundred Hitler embryos and not get a single Hitler because he was shaped by his environment”.

I think that this is suggesting that even though you will clone yourselves it will be impossible for you to create the exact same person because your clone would have to raised / exposed in the same environment and society as you, your clone should experience all of the things that you have experienced to make sure that he will be the same way as you. On the side of being ethical, people do not want human cloning to be implemented because it would cause conflict between the usual or normal way of creating life. Other Ethical groups were also worried about how the status of the family would be if cloning would be implemented.

Some even suggest that cloning may lead to more harm than good. I personally think that with what people are doing with these days, they will tend to abuse the powers of cloning. It has been a bad habit for people to misuse things that are provided to them. I believe that for cloning to be successful people must understand how it works first and that they should make sure that there would be no information that they will not share or tell the public. Some of my opinion may be impossible but it is because I believe that cloning may be used for good only if we are provided with the right information.