By Adam Street

What is Cloning?What is Cloning?•Cloning is when the genes from a living organism are copied into an unborn organism.

•If the cloned organism has identical features to the specie from where the genes were taken from then the cloning was successful.

Animal cloningAnimal cloning•Dolly the sheep was the first animal to be cloned•Dolly was cloned by taking the nucleus from a sheep’s udder cell and placing it in an egg cell which was then placed into a sheep’s womb for it to develop

•Other animals have been cloned since then such as cattle, pigs and mice

Arguments for Human CloningArguments for Human Cloning

•It doesn’t hurt anybody•Infertile people or those who have lost a child would be helped•If there was a global disaster it would help save our species •Standing in the way of progress is wrong

•It satisfies a child’s right to have good genes

•Banning things is a bad idea

Banning things is a Bad IdeaBanning things is a Bad Idea

•Unless the case against cloning is Unless the case against cloning is conclusive, cloning shouldn’t be bannedconclusive, cloning shouldn’t be banned

•However, arguments that don’t conclusively show cloning should be banned may be helpful in suggesting restrictions and rules that enable cloning to be done in an ethical and acceptable way•It’s entirely sensible to have a rigorous debate on the issue

Childrens’ RightsChildrens’ Rights

•If we could use cloning to ensure that our children were genetically sound, it would breach their human rights not to do it

•We don’t usually think that having sound genetics is a basic human right

It doesn’t hurt anybodyIt doesn’t hurt anybody

•It doesn’t hurt the person being cloned (i.e. the source of the genetic material)

•They wouldn’t give their permission if they thought it would harm them

•It doesn’t hurt the baby•Why should he/she feel any different from a baby created in the conventional way?

It would help infertile people or those who’ve lost a child

•It would be cruel to ban a technology that could allow parents to have “their child back” if they lost it and can’t have another child in the natural way because of age or sickness•Wouldn’t it be cruel to ban a technique that might enable an infertile couple to have a baby? Or to prevent a child whose parents had become infertile from having brothers or sisters

Preservation of SpeciesPreservation of Species

•Developing this technique will mean that the human race could be saved in the event of some global catastrophe

Cloning will happenCloning will happen

•Some people say that human clones will inevitably be created

•Disapproving of cloning, or passing laws against it will turn clones into a class of outcasts that people will shun, or who will live in fear of the law

•So as clones will certainly be created, banning them would produce unfair discrimination against them

Arguments against Human CloningArguments against Human Cloning

•It involves murdering embryos•It’s playing God•It requires the carrying out of unethical experiments

•It confuses family relationships and genealogy

•It reduces a person’s individuality and uniqueness

It involves murdering embryosIt involves murdering embryos

•The process of cloning inevitably involves throwing away some fertilised embryos, and at the current stage of development many of the embryos selected to live fail to develop and eventually die before birth

•Cloning is a cynical activity; abortion kills embryos, but human cloning creates embryos knowing most of them will be killed

It’s playing GodIt’s playing God

•God has devised the proper way to make babies, and we shouldn’t interfere with his will by doing it in a different way

•It’s gods call. If god doesn’t want you to have babies then you should put up with it

•There’s a radical difference between curing people by drugs or surgery, and tampering with the way in which god created life

SourcesSources

www.newscientist.comwww.newscientist.com

www.humancloning.orgwww.humancloning.org

www.clonaid.comwww.clonaid.com

www.cloninginformation.orgwww.cloninginformation.org

www.eurekascience.comwww.eurekascience.com