Cloning_Is_Morally_Permissable

Ian Wilmut revealed to the world that he had successfully cloned an adult sheep, Dolly, and had forever changed the realm of science. Since then the cloning of human beings has appeared in UN debates, and White House discussions have begun regarding the ethical implications of cloning. A poll conducted by ABC News shows that 9 out of 10 Americans believe that it should be illegal to clone humans, which still leaves a surprising number of people thinking that cloning is beneficial. Opponents to human cloning often feel that is unethical to clone human beings often argue that it is immoral for both religious and humanitarian reasons. Moreover, others describe human cloning as a luxury for the wealthy and the brilliant to produce replicas of themselves and as a tool for Organ Market Development. Conversely, I feel that cloning is immoral and a bad idea for the following reasons. If the production of human clones becomes reality, then there will be an inevitable influx of clones being produced. Such is the human nature, no matter how many people try to believe that cloning is something that will be used to create duplicates of people who will be useful to the world, the reality is that there are always going to be people who will exploit the system. The only way to prevent this catastrophe would be to outlaw human cloning, and to justify its banning, repercussions for its creation should be predicted in order to deter scientists from letting this happen. One such repercussion is the fact that cloning may have harmful effects on the population. Producing many clones runs the risk of creating a population that is entirely the same; this population would be susceptible to the same diseases, would have an identical gene pool and could be annihilated in one blow. A single disease that effects one person in this hypothetical population, can affect every single other person in the population. However, less drastic but more probable events could occur from lack of genetic diversity. A food shortage, a major issue, could be potentially be combated through the implementation of the cloning of cows . Although this isn’t technically human cloning this could potentially save the entire race as it completely solves the problem of food shortages and thus can be considered an argument for cloning. If a disease were to strike the cow population which will be eventually consisting of the same exact gene combination over the years of cloning, this disease would completely decimate the population. The result could be catastrophic food shortages, at a scale that would be exponentially higher than any we could imagine. Cloning is currently a very expensive process, in the sense of money, time and knowledge. It took Ian Wilmut and his associates 277 tries to successfully create Dolly, and however incredible this experiment was, Dolly came along with many defects leading to her premature demise. Opponents may try to combat this argument by say that since then a new cloning technique has been created that has been proven to be more reliable. But this “more reliable method” is only relatively better as this technique has a 2% to 3% success rate compared to the archaic method which had a success rate of less that 1%. When in human history has something so expensive, so risky, and so time consuming been accepted as something beneficial and worthwhile to the scientific community' Scientists are concerned with the medical risks and uncertainty associated with the cloning of humans. Due to the fact that the cell that the clone is being based off of a fully development adult cell, the clone will be subject to all of the stress that that cell had gone through. Even if you pick the perfect cell, one that hasn’t been flawed by the elements, its genes have been affected. It is a well known fact that as your grow older you become more susceptible to diseases and disorders, and that weakness is transferred to the clone that receives the old cell. Which raises the question as to whether or not that clone will act upon those same genes or somehow create its own set. Ironically scientists that are pushing to create these clones have no idea themselves what will happen if this was attempted. If clones are created, there is no telling what will happen to the status of the human being. The word may need to be redefined, and human moral codes may need to be rewritten. Considering the inherent propensity human beings have to discriminate of certain groups, as see throughout history, one of the things that cloning may be used for is the creation of a genetic underclass that could be used as slaves. Although this may seem extreme, why would we, as a race, be willing to risk these things, just so that a replica could be made of someone'