Cloning techniques will eventually be perfected in mammals and will then be suitable for human trials. Reproductive cloning can provide genetically related children for people who cannot be helped by other fertility treatments i.
Reproductive cloning would allow lesbians to have a child without having to use donor sperm, and gay men to have a child that does not have genes derived from an egg donor though, of course, a surrogate would have to carry the pregnancy. Reproductive cloning could allow parents of a child who has died to seek redress for their loss.
Cloning is a reproductive right, and should be allowed once it is judged to be no less safe than natural reproduction. The number of men and women who do not produce eggs or sperm at all is very small, and has been greatly reduced by modern assisted-reproduction techniques.
If cloning could be perfected and used for this limited group, it would be all but impossible to prevent its use from spreading.
Further, this argument appropriates the phrase "genetically related" to embrace a condition that has never before occurred in human history, one which abolishes the genetic variations that have always existed between parent and child.
Even if cloning were safe, it would be impossible to allow reproductive cloning for lesbians or gay men without making it generally available to all. Policy and social changes that protect lesbian and gay families are a much more pressing need. Throughout history, parents who have lost children have grieved and sought consolation from family and community.
Rights are socially negotiated, and no "right" to clone oneself has ever been established. Furthermore, there is an immense difference between a woman's desire to terminate an unwanted pregnancy and the desire to create a genetic duplicate of another person.
There is no inconsistency between supporting the former and opposing the latter. Most advocates of human cloning also advocate the genetic modification of the human species. Dolly originated from adult cell DNA, replicating an already-existing genome. So, although Dolly was the clone of an adult sheep, cloning an adult monkey failed. It is a big scientific step from primates to humans. Still, this announcement has rekindled the debate about human cloning — whether it should be pursued and for what purpose.
Certainly, safety considerations and our obligation to not cause undue harm should give us pause. After all, Hua Hua and Zhong Zhong were the only live births to result from the cloning of 79 embryos. The scientists themselves deny any interest in human cloning. Unfortunately, our automatic reflex to think about human applications has taken our attention away from the ethics of primate cloning itself.
We need to ask ourselves if the potential to understand and cure human disease justifies the deliberate creation of primate clones for research. The AAAS supports research cloning and the use of somatic cell nuclear transfer to enhance the ability to produce cloned cells in order to test possible therapies on diseases. We object to the use of somatic cell nuclear transfer for reproductive cloning purposes, to create a human.
First and foremost, the prospect of using these techniques to clone a human being raises very strong ethical, moral, and social concerns. Besides ethics, though, one of the other barriers [to cloning humans] is more practical: Cloning is very difficult. They were enthusiastic about pursuing such a feat despite the serious genetic problems encountered in animal cloning, the known risks to the mother, and the great potential for serious birth defects.
Ninety-five to ninety-seven percent of animal cloning attempts still end in failure, and the scientists who cloned Dolly failed times before they succeeded in producing a single live-born clone of an adult sheep.
Most scientific experts believe that attempts to clone humans will result in even higher failure rates. Scientists such as Ian Wilmut who produced Dolly and Rudolf Jaenisch of MIT have concluded that the most likely cause of abnormal development in cloned animals is faulty reprogramming of the genome. When the nucleus of a somatic cell is introduced into an enucleated egg, the DNA in the nucleus has to be "reprogrammed" in order for a human being to develop fully. If this reprogramming of the nuclear DNA does not go exactly right, abnormal gene expression of one or some of the more than 30, genes can result.
Fortunately, the majority of Congress is outspokenly opposed to human cloning for reproductive purposes. However, as evidenced in Senator Daschle's move to delay consideration of H. However, this type of human cloning is also grossly unethical for at least three reasons. First, research cloning can only be justified by the utilitarian calculus that prizes the lives of the millions of people who could potentially be treated or cured as a result of the research over the lives of the embryos who would be destroyed in order for the research to proceed.
However, it is never ethical to sacrifice one human life for the real or potential benefit of others. Second, it is unethical to view a human being--regardless of its age--as a means to an end. Even supporters of embryonic stem cell research and other embryo research have long been opposed to the "special creation of embryos solely for the purpose of research.
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