Cloning: Why we shouldn't be against it
You have been told that you are unique. The belief that there is no one else like you in the whole world made you feel special and proud. This belief may not be true in the future. 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 cloning
Another argument against cloning is that it would be available only to the wealthy and therefore would increase social inequality. What else is new? This is the story of American health care. We need a better health care system, no a ban on new technologies. Nature clones people all the time, and rather frequently. Approximately 1 in 1000 birth is of identical twins. However, despite how many or how few individual characteristics twins have in common, they are different people. They have their own identities, their own thoughts, and their own rights. They enter different occupations, get different diseases, have different experiences with marriage, alcohol, community leadership, and etc. They have different souls as would cloned individuals. Even if somebody did clone 2,000 Napoleons, they would be even more different from their parents than twins are from each other because the cloned child would be raised in a different historical period. The argument that cloning robs individuals of their individuality therefore doesn't hold. 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. 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 genetic
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, health care, family relationship, dna sheep's,
Approximate Word count = 1327
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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