This paper is an argumentative essay of the cons of cloning.
Since the dawn of civilization, man has always been trying to do things that would ultimately be for his betterment. In the midst of it, man actually has overlooked the fact that in his efforts of making things better and easy for him, he is harming the nature and creating several misbalances in the environment. Man has found a new technology, in the name of “cloning”, in which he can play God all for the wrong reasons. The need for cloning is one of the biggest mistakes of mankind and it can be understood in simple words that man wants to create clones for reaping benefits out of them. It can be understood that the reason for creating clone is for the potential to create a genetic underclass.
Cloning is a concept of creating another life form based on the donor. The clone would replicate all the features of its donors and the technology is meant to copy a best specimen, which is made naturally. The fact is, if everyone firstly starts distending nature, then how are we suppose to differentiate of what is best of any specie. “Dolly”, was the famous sheep that was cloned. Her cloning was real fact line that brought the people to understand the ethical damage of cloning. The fact that an animal could be cloned exactly like her donor brought the world into dismal situation as this in regard started the next research of human cloning. The horrors associated with human cloning are unimaginable. Scientists and pro cloning researchers are claiming that this technology would end up saving lives, but the basic question that they are forgetting is what about the clone’s life. This cloning technology goes hand in glove with birth genome and the
cloning technology would allow parents to choose the looks of the baby as well as the character traits of their offspring. It would be more like going to restaurant and ordering a dish rather than giving birth to a child that naturally looks like their parents. Children can have intelligence of Albert Einstein and looks of any compelling Hollywood actor. This would up surge a new race to start a perfect society full of beautiful and intelligent people. Cloning in the end would only mock up nature, as the need for a natural birth would get completely swayed and everyone in the world would be having blue eyed babies. This can be further assessed by the following:
‘Human cloning would allow families or society to reproduce individuals of great genius, talent, or beauty, where these traits are presumed to be based on the individuals’ desirable or superior genetic makeups. For example, some admirers of great athletes, musicians, or mathematicians, believing that the admired attributes are the result of a superior genetic endowment, might want to clone these distinguished individuals. Just as the cloning of cattle is being promoted as a means of perpetuating champion milk- or meat-producing cows, so cloning-to-produce-children has been touted as a means of perpetuating certain “superior” human exemplars’ (Human Cloning and Human Dignity: An Ethical Inquiry)
As it can be seen from the above passage, that humans world now be genetically modified and this would create another set of problems. As it is the world faces enough
of apathy and discrimination and it is almost assured that there can be a lot of discrimination done by the genetically modified intelligent and beautiful people over the people who had natural births.
Persons who are on the pro side for cloning compare cloning with identical twins and say it is almost the same thing. One thing that is evidently forgotten is twins are natural and are not genetically modified as in the case of cloning. It is actually a very horrid thing even to imagine a gene pool being meddled with and then after a series of modifications a clone is created that looks identical to its donors. So it can be expected that there will be lot of people who would have extremely close resemblances in terms of looks and traits in terms of character roaming in the society. The following passage will explain the cloning confusion of debate over its resemblance to identical twins:
‘The scholar of constitutional law Lawrence tribe pointed out in 1978, for example, that human cloning could alter the very meaning of humanity. Especially the cloned person would be denied a sense of uniqueness. Let us remember that there is no strong analogy between human cloning and natural identical twinning, for in the latter case there is still in the blessing of newness in the newborns. While identical twins do occur naturally and are unique persons, this does not justify the temptation to impose external sameness more widely’ (By M. L. Rantala, Arthur J. Milgram. p 154)
Cloning is very rampantly being used in animals and one thing that is pretty much true is that not all clones live healthy and most of them like ‘Dolly the sheep’, which was the first clone die much early then an average span of their species or for that matter even the life span of the donor. Dolly because of cloning had smaller telomeres and telomeres are considered as the indicators of cell ageing as they are located at the end of the chromosomes.
Cloning is not good for the society and piece by the government rendered agency endorses the point when the ethical issues revolving around cloning were discussed and it was later on instructed to the executive departments and agencies to not to fund cloning. (Cloning Human Beings: Report and Recommendations 1997). Also the fact that cloning itself is bad for the clones is an issue that scientists and pro cloning associated people have forgotten about. The following facts about animal endangerment while cloning will shed light over the danger of the process itself.
’20-30 % cow clones are up to twice as large at birth and needs to be delivered by cesarean section. Ten percent of cows’ clones have other problems, including joint disorders. When added to the risk of harm to the clone of being built from old and possibly mutated genes could lead to genetic diseases and malformations, the safety of cloning is in real doubt. Recall that Dolly was the only success in over 277 attempts to clone a sheep. Such numbers would be unacceptable in a human reproductive enterprise’ (James M. Humber, Robert F. Almeder. P 43).
Cloned animals were given clean chit by the FDA for consumption. But now theories have come up that have questioned the authorization of allowing products of cloned animals for consuming have brought the government and FDA in a fix. FDA had stated that the meat and milk are safe and no special branding message is required on the packaging stating it to be of cloned animals. According to a consumer filer report, which mainly scientists have stated that there has been no evidence till now that cloned food is safe in anyways and the FDA conducted the approval on very scanty data (MSNBC 2007).
It is actually very bizarre on the part of scientists still suggesting that cloning is good, as clear indicators of cloning could lead to severe repulsions in the society and animal world have been analyzed. The no. of animals getting sacrificed in the sake of cloning is unimaginable, and they expect funds from the government to waste 277 fetuses, similar to the creation of ‘dolly the sheep’. Ethically how can one give permission to start such atrocity on mankind? The status of cloned babies would bring in a new range of conflicts that might give man new reasons to war.
Conclusion
If this technology falls on bad hands, then one can expect cloning to be done to increase flesh trade by cloning females as sex slaves. Or cloning could be used for genetically modifying people who would be fighting and would eventually become a kind of destructive war machines. Dynamite was created with an intention for blasting mines, not people. Cloning would have an effect worse than dynamites. Man has always suffered when it has dampened nature, prime examples being global warming. Cloning would be the biggest disaster man would unleash on nature and on its own kind too.
Works cited
1) The President’s Council on Bioethics Washington, D.C. “Human Cloning and Human Dignity: An Ethical Inquiry”. http://www.bioethics.gov/reports/cloningreport/children.html#paragraph2
2) M. L. Rantala, Arthur J. Milgram, “Cloning for and against”. Open court Publishing. Published in 1999
3) “Cloning Human Beings: Report and Recommendations of Bioethics,” Published by the commission in 1997
4) James M. Humber, Robert F. Almeder, “Human Cloning”. Humana Press.
Published in 1998
5) MSNBC, “Bad science used to OK cloned food”, associated press, March 21st
2007. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17727950/
6) Gregory E.Pence, “Flesh of My Flesh, the ethics of human cloning”. Rowman
and Littlefield. Published in 1998
