As rapidly advancing biotechnology makes the possibility of human cloning a reality, the debate intensifies. Human cloning could contribute to cures for terminal illnesses and support for infertile couples, but it faces much opposition due to technical risks and ethical concerns. Considering the value of life that a cloned human would bring, as well as the ethical issues of social disruption and religious challenge, it is time to re-examine whether human cloning is a justifiable experiment for the advancement of science.
“In the rapidly developing and evolving world of biotechnology, things that were unthinkable even a decade ago are now possible. Gene cloning is one such example. Dolly, a cloned sheep, was created by science in 1997 and caused a lot of controversy. As the first fully cloned animal, Dolly sparked both excitement and concern, and sparked a debate about the possibility of cloning not only animals but also humans. Human cloning is a sensitive topic that deals with human life, and it raises a number of issues. Personally, I’m against human cloning. Considering the risks of experimentation and ethical issues, I believe that human cloning would do more harm than good. In this essay, I’ll first look at the concept and possibility of human cloning, and then review the main points of the debate, comparing the pro and con positions.
First, we need to define what human cloning is. In movies and novels, human cloning is often used to create a physically and mentally identical human being, but this is not possible with modern technology. Real human cloning involves the creation of a genetically identical human being, and the cloned creature does not have the thoughts or memories of the original human being. Technically, human cloning means “cloning of human genes. The press and media have presented horrifying scenarios of cloning dead people to bring them back to life, mass cloning of people to use them as slaves, and the commoditization of human beings, which has given the public the misconception that human cloning means creating cloned humans. In reality, human cloning technology involves extracting the nucleus of a person’s somatic cell, removing the existing nucleus from an egg, inserting it, and growing it into a cloned embryo.
Proponents of human cloning emphasize that it can help terminally ill patients and infertile couples. For example, if a couple with a recessive gene for a fatal disease were to have a child naturally, the child would likely inherit the disease, but with cloning, they could have a child with only one parent’s genes. Also, an absolutely infertile couple with anzoospermia or azoospermia can have a child with their own genes through somatic cell nuclear transfer.
The arguments against human cloning mainly stem from the fact that it is unethical. The first reason is that due to the technical limitations of human cloning, innocent lives may be sacrificed before it is successful. There are no official cases of human cloning, but given the low success rate of animal cloning, the odds of human cloning being successful are also low. In the case of Dolly, a cloned sheep, it took 276 failures, including stillbirths and deformities, before she was successfully cloned. Since sheep have four times the fertility of humans, it is calculated that it takes about 1,000 fertilizations to create a single human clone. Even if these fertilized eggs are created and implantation occurs, more than 100 of them are likely to miscarry, and even those that do survive are expected to die from severe side effects, including heart wall defects, spinal defects, hydrocephalus, partial lung agenesis, and immune deficiencies. With all of these sacrifices, it’s hard to see why we would ever want to clone a human being.
Even if successful, there are limits to how long a cloned organism can be kept alive. Due to genetic aging, cloned organisms are at risk of premature death. In fact, Dolly the cloned sheep lived for six years before dying, which is shorter than the average lifespan of a sheep, which is 12 years. Because the sheep that provided her genes was 6 years old, Dolly inherited genes that had already aged. This happens because of DNA structures called telomeres that determine the number of times a cell divides. When genes are duplicated, telomeres are also duplicated, so even in a newborn organism, the lifespan of the genes is already reduced. Dolly also developed symptoms that are common in aging sheep, including arthritis and advanced lung disease. “What scientists have realized since Dolly is that cloning is an imperfect process,” Time reported.
Second, cloned humans could disrupt the social order. Humans inherit their genes from their parents and become part of the family as their children. However, this concept does not apply to cloned humans. From a biological point of view, a clone is just a later-born identical twin of the original human being. From a social perspective, the situation is more complicated. A clone that is modeled after the genes of an original human will be confused about whether to call the original a parent, brother, or sister. This fundamental identity issue will cause confusion and negatively impact the concept of the family as the basic unit of society. Ultimately, any technology that has the potential to disrupt social order should be banned.
The strongest voices against human cloning come from religious groups, especially Christianity. Unlike the aforementioned arguments, Christians are opposed on religious grounds. The conservative wing of Christianity argues that human cloning is a challenge to God and destroys the created order. In Christianity, the created order is the process by which a man and a woman fall in love and procreate through sexual union, and the child grows up in the love of his or her parents, establishing an identity and continuing society and the human species. Human cloning, on the other hand, disrupts the traditional family system, as children are born without sexual union and may have multiple parents. From a Christian perspective, human cloning is a violation of God’s law because it allows humans to be commodified or instrumentalized.
As history has shown, the development of science and technology does not always go according to human intentions. Science is a double-edged sword. Human cloning is a Pandora’s box of possibilities, with the potential to bring children to infertile couples and prevent disabilities, but it also has the potential to commoditize and dehumanize human beings. Therefore, we must have the ethical and moral wisdom to deal with human cloning so that it does not harm humanity. As I have stated before, I am against human cloning. Although human cloning is not technically feasible at the moment, there are many countries that have not banned research, so we should always be vigilant. Only a strong voice of opposition will prevent the sacrifice of innocent lives for research.
