Morality Of Cloning Cloning Of Humans Essay - 1,414 words

Humans have within their grasp the ability and technology to create life. Many believe that this knowledge will lead to further degradation of the human spirit. But others, like Prometheus and his gift of fire, believe that new technology is the key to a new, and better, reality. Genetic engineering and, specifically, cloning, of human life has become an issue of extreme gravity in the age of technology where anything may be dreamed and many things are possible. Cloning is a reality in today's world: "Three months ago, Gearhart and Thomson announced that they had each isolated embryonic stem cells and induced them to begin copying themselves without turning into anything else. In so doing, they apparently discovered a way to make stem cells by the billions, creating a biological feedstock that might, in turn, be employed to produce brand-new, healthy human tissue.


That is, they discovered how to fabricate the stuff of which Leon R. Kass proposed three perspectives that serve to classify the ways people think of cloning as beneficial: The technological perspective "will be seen as an extension of existing techniques for assisting reproduction and determining the genetic makeup of children. Like them, cloning is to be regarded as a neutral technique, with no inherent meaning or goodness, but subject to multiple uses, some good, some bad. The morality of cloning thus depends absolutely on the goodness or badness of the motives and intentions of the cloner's... by the way the parents nurture and rear their resulting child and whether they bestow the same love and affection on a child brought into existence by a technique of assisted reproduction as they would on a child born in the usual way. The liberal (or libertarian or liberationist) perspective sets cloning in the context of rights, freedoms and personal empowerment.


Cloning is just a new option for exercising an individual's right to reproduce or to have the kind of child that he or she wants... For those who hold this outlook, the only moral restraints on cloning are adequately informed consent and the avoidance of bodily harm. The meliorist... see in cloning a new prospect for improving human beings -- minimally, by ensuring the perpetuation of healthy individuals by avoiding the risks of genetic disease inherent in the lottery of sex, and maximally, by producing "optimum babies, " preserving outstanding genetic material, and (with the help of soon-to-come techniques for precise genetic engineering) enhancing inborn human capacities on many fronts.


Here the morality of cloning as a means is justified solely by the excellence of the end, that is, by the outstanding traits or individuals cloned -- beauty, or brawn, or The detractors of cloning cite the loss of human dignity as the primary adverse effect. The process of cloning includes extraction of human cells from early life - the use of aborted fetuses. Many people find this repugnant and recoil from the potential uses such knowledge could be put to - like Frankenstein and his creation, is Man playing God? and what are the unforeseen God created life from the firmament. Dr. Frankenstein created life from what was once living matter.


The scientists of today propose to create life from life. Frankenstein harvested his components from the charnel houses of Ingolstadt, whereas the seeds of life are now reaped from the unborn dead. Perhaps the hope of cloning is like the wish of Dr. Frankenstein that he could return to life those nearest and dearest when they are killed by his creation in revenge for mankind's rejection of him and Frankenstein's destruction of the half-finished female. Perhaps the proponents, like Frankenstein, will run in fear from the room after they have found they are successful in creating a new Being. The revulsion seen in the acts of the Doctor are mirrored in the response of modern Man to the concept of cloning.


The Being, once brought to life, is grotesque, unacceptable to others of humankind. Is this what we fear in the future of genetic engineering? Has modern science, like Prometheus and Pandora, unlocked a secret for which the control does not yet exist? Frankenstein admits that " ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

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Essay Tags: stem cells, genetic engineering, cloning of humans, morality of cloning, moral dilemma

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