The world was stunned by the news in late February 1997 that a British embryologist named Ian Wilmut and his research team had successfully cloned a lamb named Dolly from an adult sheep. Dolly was created by replacing the DNA of one sheep's egg with the DNA of another sheep's udder. While plants and lower forms of animal life have been successfully cloned for many years now, before Wilmut's announcement it had been thought by many to be unlikely that such a procedure could be performed on higher mammals. The world media was immediately filled with heated discussions about the ethical implications of cloning.

Some of the most powerful people in the world have felt compelled to act against this threat. President Clinton swiftly imposed a ban on federal funding for human-cloning research. Bills are in the works in both houses of Congress to outlaw human cloning which it taken to be a fundamentally evil thing that must be stopped. But what is exactly bad about it? From an ethical point of view , it is difficult to see exactly what is wrong with clon

One recurring image in anti-cloning propaganda is of some evil dictator raising an army of cloned warriors. But who is going to raise such an army. Clones start out life as babies. It is much easier to recruit young adults than to take care of babies for 20 years. Remember that cloning isn't the same as genetic engineering. We can't make supermen-we have to find him first and his bravery might- or might not - be genetically determined.

We can start by asking whether human beings have a right to reproduce. I say " Yes". I have no moral right to tell other people they shouldn't be able to have children, and I don't see that Bill Clinton has that right either. If humans have a right to reproduce, what right does society have to limit the means? Essentially all reproduction is done these days with medical help- at delivery, and even before. Truly natural human reproduction would make pregnancy-related death the number.1 killer of adult women.

Perhaps the strongest ethical argument against cloning is that it could lead to a new , unfamiliar type of family relationship. We have no idea what it would be like to grow up as the child of a parent who seems to know you from inside. Some psychological characteristics may be biologically based and the parent will know in advance what crises a cloned teenager will go through and how he or she will respond. It may produce a good and loving relationship, because the parent may understand, to greater degree than most parents, what the child is going through. ON the other hand, most children want to have their own space. Still, just because a family relationship is new and untried, is not a reason to condemn it automatically. IN the past . ,many types of family relationships were considered harmful but later showed to cause no harm to the children. Among these are joint custody after divorce, gay and lesbian parenting, and interracial adoption. As with adoption, in-vitro fertilization, and use of donor sperm, how the

Some common words found in the essay are:
Ok Nature, Bill Clinton, Federal Government, Ian Wilmut, Napoleon's Tomb, Near East, President Clinton, Word Adam's, Sustainer Ruler, , human cloning, cloning research, argument cloning, successfully cloned, family relationship, health care, dna sheep's, in-vitro fertilization,
Approximate Word count = 1326
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)