No Cloning!
On February 24, 1997, the world was shocked and fascinated by the announcement of Ian Wilmut and his colleagues. A press release stated that they had successfully cloned a sheep from a single cell of an adult sheep. Since then, cloning has become one of the most controversial and widely discussed topics. The issue that gets the greatest focus is human cloning, and there has been an onslaught of protests and people lobbying for a ban on it. However, there is a real danger that prohibitions on cloning will open the door to inappropriate restrictions on accepted medical and genetic practices. Therefore, the banning of cloning is unjust. The most popular objection to human cloning is the assumption that science would be playing God if it were to create human clones. This argument refuses to accept the advantage of biological processes and to view the changes of the world. Religious objections were once raised at the prospects of autopsies, anesthesia, artificial insemination, organ transplants, and other acts that seemed to be tampering with divine will. Yet enormous benefits have been gathered by each of these innovations, and they have become a part of human's daily life. The issue of playing God has already arisen when a doctor sel
ects a patient on a waiting list for transplant and leaves others to die, and when the doctor puts their patient under life support whenever they are in coma or they are near death. The moral issue of cloning is similar to the past issue faced by the society such as nuclear energy, recombinant DNA, and the computer encryption. There have always been religious and moral objections to new technologies and changes merely because they are different and unknown to humans. The public not only worries about science playing God, but also fears that the cloned child's autonomy and individuality will be reduced because it will have the same DNA as another person. One of the more eloquently stated fears about the loss of uniqueness is a consideration for the rights of the clone to a unique and untried genotype. Moreover, the cloned individual will be saddled with a genotype that has already lived. He will not be a fully surprise to the world, and other people are most likely to compare his performances in life with that of his clone source. But the child who results from cloning will not be the same person as the clone source, even if the two share many physical characteristics. Its uterine, early childhood, and overall rearing environment and experiences will be different. Given the importance for nurture in making a person who he is, the danger that the person cloned will lack a unique individuality is highly fanciful. When Ian Wilmut and his colleagues announced they had successfully cloned a sheep, president Clinton immediately banned federal funds from being used for human cloning research, stating that, "Any discovery that touches upon human creation is not simply a matter of scientific inquiry, it is a matter of morality and spirituality as well. Each human life is unique, born of a miracle that reaches beyond laboratory science." However, president Clinton has failed to see the benefits of human cloning. Cloning ca
Some common words found in the essay are:
Ian Wilmut, Richard Seed, human cloning, , ian wilmut, playing god, age zero, successfully cloned sheep, science playing god, ian wilmut colleagues, repair damaged, clone source, cloning research, cloned sheep, cell adult, cloning technology,
Approximate Word count = 1297
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
|
