This article analyzes the impact of human cloning technology on personal dignity and social stability. If human cloning becomes possible, people could be perceived as replaceable at any time, which could diminish the inherent value of individuals and weaken social bonds. Furthermore, it explains the ripple effects of cloning technology on social consensus and the lives of its members by examining how human beings’ instinctive rejection of life and existence arises.
Human cloning is the creation of a human being with identical genes by cloning a zygote, or somatic cell, which is the state of cell division after the fertilization of a sperm and egg but before it develops into a fetus. In other words, it is the creation of another individual human being that is genetically identical to one human being. Human cloning was first publicized in 1996 with the birth of Dolly, a cloned sheep in the United Kingdom. Dolly was the first mammal to be created by somatic cell cloning and sparked an ethical and social debate about the possibility of human cloning. This led to the question: “What social changes will we undergo if humans can be cloned?” Let’s apply these technologies to ourselves. What would we think if there was a human being that looked, sounded, spoke, had fingerprints, and blood type exactly like us (assuming they were similar, though they could vary depending on the environment)? Our first instinct would be to reject it. I want to explain why this aversion to human cloning arises.
First, why do we have an aversion to human cloning? We would typically answer something like this “Because it violates our dignity!” But what is our dignity? In order to find out why there is opposition, we need to clarify what we mean by dignity. First, let’s look up the meaning of dignity. The encyclopedia defines human dignity as “the inherent right of an individual to be valued, respected, and treated ethically.” This means “who is worthy of dignity? This means that because humans are dignified, no one should kill them or treat them harshly, and that no matter how expensive something is, it cannot be compared to a human being. This dignity is manifested in the idea that human life is more expensive than anything else. Dignity goes beyond simply protecting human life; it emphasizes that all human beings have inherent dignity and worth and should be treated equally. It is an important concept for protecting individual human rights and maintaining the foundations of society. Dignity is also mentioned in the law. Article 10 of the Constitution states that ‘Every citizen has the dignity and worth as a human being,’ and human rights are likewise derived from human dignity. However, these statements do not explain why human beings are dignified. Let’s discuss why human beings are dignified.
Why are human beings dignified? I have concluded that human beings must be dignified above all else. Without dignity, it would be difficult for us to achieve mutual respect and cooperation in the course of human development. Human society is sustained by moral principles that require us to respect and protect each other, even in the midst of competition and conflict. If a soldier in a war is wounded and abandoned without healing, who will fight the war and who will protect the society? If we kill or harm someone we don’t like in our daily lives, we will have to live in an insecure society where we don’t know when we will die, just like in a primitive state. Because society is a group of humans gathered to survive, to avoid an unstable and chaotic environment, humans are endowed with the attribute of dignity and are obligated to treat each other with dignity. The reason why humans are dignified is not because they have dignified attributes, but because we must treat them as dignified beings for our own survival and the maintenance of society.
Of course, you can argue against this based on less direct circumstances. For example, if trying to save a drowning person causes more people to die and uses additional social resources, in Korea, divers risked their lives to search for children in a disaster like the Sewol ferry, and a lot of taxpayer money was spent to raise the submerged Sewol from the sea. This may not be beneficial to society or to the divers personally. However, the “imperative” to help when someone is in danger and need, along with the thought of what if I had been in that situation, and the understanding and empathy that it could be you, makes our society stronger and more stable. This “duty” manifests itself in welfare, which serves as a social safety net, and this welfare is the basis for passing on a more stable and humane life to our children, so the dignity of every human being in society indirectly benefits both society and its members. In conclusion, necessity creates a “right,” which our society has granted to individuals through the tacit agreement of its members in the name of dignity. Our dignity can be defined as follows. ‘Dignity is a social agreement created out of necessity.’
We feel that our dignity is undermined by human cloning. What specifically undermines our dignity? Human cloning treats human beings like objects and can be created arbitrarily at any time. Cloning reduces the inherent value of human beings to a means to an end. When the act of creating life becomes part of mechanical reproduction, its value and independence is undermined: someone can be created to take our place without us. It also undermines the value of individuals themselves and devalues their survival. When people are treated like parts, it’s hard to expect them to do more than their part in society. A dynamic and progressive society requires its members to be creative and proactive beyond their roles, but it is difficult to motivate individuals in an environment where there are clones that can replace them at any time, and they may not feel a sense of belonging to the society and responsible for their roles.
Society has endowed individuals with an attribute of dignity in order to protect its members and maintain and develop itself. However, human cloning is a technology that can break this social consensus and jeopardize both society and its members, so we have an instinctive aversion to it.
