People often question whether or not we as a scientific nation are trying to play the role of God. Many people say that we should not try to interfere with nature. That is fine if in everyday life we did not try to change our habitat every single second of every single day. More than likely at one point and time the land on which your house sits was covered by a pasture of woodlands. That is interference. If we try to clone organs for transplant patients that are in their final hour then we are actually improving their life. If improvement in the quality of life is playing God, then is that necessarily a bad thing?
Do we have the right to clone? We are all guaranteed rights by the fact that we are human beings. Those rights include the right to pursue areas of scientific study. Not many people vocalized his or her disapproval of space exploration. At the time that there was no talk of how morally wrong Neil Armstrongs walk on the moon was going to be. They could have argued the fact we are created on earth we must stay here and not interfere with things beyond our comprehension. If they did, and the program did not lift off, then we would not have some of the technologies that we have today.
Cloning can only yield new technologies that will be beneficial to society. One misconception that many people have is that this technology can fall into the wrong hands. We could not clone a person of history to be the same person that he or she was before. If we were to do that then it would be near impossible to reproduce the same character. They would like any other ordinary human; they would be conceived, developed, and then born as all other babies. They would have the same appearance and genetic makeup as their equal. This does not mean that they would have the same mental capacity as their previous life.
There are many things that lead to a humans personality. Genetic makeup does not have as significant role as many believe. Organ cloning is something that would be extremely beneficial to society. Imagine the ability to create a liver for a child that has less than a month to live. In the medical profession the philosophy of every doctor is to improve the quality of life. Is giving a child a second chance improving the quality of life? Or is it playing God? Imagine if the technology was available to clone his liver in order to prolong his life.
In this country there are thousands of people on waiting lists to receive new organs that will help prolong their life. Many of these people will die because there is not a suitable donor that matches their needs. Imagine the lives that will be saved if an individual can clone their own liver, or any other organ that is needed to survive an illness. As much as cloning is perceived as a good thing, it could change life to an entire new civilization. Cloning runs the risk of creating a population that is entirely the same. This population would be susceptible to the same diseases, and one disease could devastate the entire population.
One can easily picture humans being wiped out be a single virus, but more events could occur from a lack of genetic diversity. For example, if a large percentage of a nation’s cattle are identical clones, a single virus could effect the entire population. The result could be large food shortage in the United States. Any research into human cloning would eventually need to be tested on human. The ability to clone humans may lead to the genetic tailoring of offspring. The heart of the cloning debate is concerned with the genetic management of a human embryo before it begins development.
It is conceivable that scientists could alter a baby’s genetic codes to give the individual a certain color of eyes or genetic resistance to certain diseases. This is viewed as inappropriate, some look at it as playing God. Cloning might be used to create a perfect human, or one with above normal strength and sub-normal intelligence, a genetic underclass. Also, if cloning were perfected in humans, there would be no genetic need for men. As in the book, A Brave New World, they cloned people into classes that made an entire society of genetic humans that resembled nothing less than an ant-farm.
In the Alpha Class the cloning conditioned one to have a great life just like the queen ant having hundreds protect her. Or in the Epsilon Class being conditioned to think that being a janitor is a good thing or the equivalent to a worker ant. They go about their work as if its the best work possible. By creating the perfect clone and knowing the fact that men could be eliminated from existence is playing God. Cloning might have a detrimental effect on domestic relationships. A child born from an adult DNA cloning of his father could be considered a delayed identical twin of one of his parents.
It is unknown as to how a human might react if he or she knew he or she was an exact duplicate of an older individual. Researchers say that within 5 years a pill that will help prevent cancer will be introduced on the market. That is great if you do not already have it. If we find the gene that has been mutated then we will be able to correct that, alleviating all of the signs of the cancer. Cloning will change the face of the planet forever. We should be excited that we are able to duplicate such a complex sequence of genes.
Whatever you feel is morally right we should allow this to happen because if we never explore the risks then we can never enjoy the benefits. As previously stated the space exploration yielded many new technologies that will forever aid in the bettering of society. We cannot continue to prohibit the exploration of scientific study. If this practice continues then we will not be able to continue to develop advancements in the prolonging of the human species. We can’t impose a ban on cloning, if we do then who is to say that we will not impose a ban on the research that will hopefully one day lead to a cure for cancer.
