what does everyone think of Scientists trying to clone human embryos?

Question

im trying to write an essay for a scholarship on scientific studies and projects. i need some good points on why this is bad or good. i personally think its one of the worst possible studies every. think of all the caos it would cause. go into depth.

Answer 1

It should be noted that the doomesday scenarios claimed for this technique - cloning Hitler or the like - are absolute nonsense. This takes genetic determinism to its illogical conclusion. To suggest that a clone would adopt the personality of the original is to suggest there's a gene for "genocide of the Jews", which is clearly nonsense.

It should also be noted that many people accused of being genetic determinists aren't, or at least aren't by the definition used by the accusers. When a gene "for" X is implied, there is always an unstated "given all other things being equal", and usually an "but only in a statistical sense", so a gene for a behaviour will only make it more likely, not force it.

Then we have the religious objections - that the clone would not have a soul. Since embryos are cloned in the same way identical twins are formed, this would mean that identical twins do not have separate souls.

The real issue I have with this kind of science is eugenics. According to my genes, I'm dead by now - or at least many people with one condition I happen to have are. If we allow the creation and cloning of "perfect" embryos, and encourage the termination of "imperfect" embryos, we will live in a much worse-off place. We will be at the will of whoever decides what is "perfect" and what is not. What's more, people will suffer the whims of their parents. What happens when a couple order up an athlete, and the child instead spends all day fiddling with his Wii? Will they punish him for not turning out how the reciept says? Will ethnic minorities be eliminated as being imperfect? Will parents ensure they have somebody to look after them in old age order up an ugly and infertile slave child?

It's clear to me that we should ban commercial offerings of genetic manipulation of offspring right now, and also close our borders to genetically engineered humans - so treatment cannot be offered in rogue states. The ethics need a clarification and unity - is stupidity a disease?

Answer 2

From a scientific standpoint, (at this point in time) cloning embryos is a means to create stem cells. Stem cells have been widely regarded as the wave of the future in terms of medical care. They will allow us to cure things thought impossible a few years ago. They are really the only way at this point to advance medicine to a new age.

There is also the philosophical debate when it comes to cloning embryos. Does anyone have the right to create and destroy life and manipulate it at this level? Leaving all religion aside, embryos have the potential to become people at an organic level regardless if they are not allowed that chance by scientists. The question that no one can seem to agree to the answer is when do call an embryo "alive" or a "person"? I am not sure people will ever come a consensus. At a biological level scientists must decide what characteristic an embryo must exibit to be called alive. Is it a heartbeat, brain activity, etc? Before this trait is evident, can they be called a medical bioproduct?

I myself have not fully decided what side of the debate I am on yet. Way too many conflicting ideas at this point. I almost feel sorry for the zealots on either side, shows ignorance and intollerance for ideas and healthy debate.

Just some food for thought.

Answer 3

So what is the aim of the cloning? This is nothing else than a possible new method to understand the basic mechanisms of aging. What is the advantage for the future? Have you ever heard the so called therapeutic cloning? This method is for producing stem cells for treat different diseases that has no other method (Parkinson, alcheimer disease, brain or spinal cord injuries) or an alternative for the transplantation (heart attack, liver carcinoma). The basic of this method that a patient treated with its own stem cells after he or she have been cloned. In this method the cloned embryo will be the donor of the used stem cells.
Advantage of this mechanic is that relatively cheep and will be no any immune response against the used cells.
Disadvantage: you can imagine: need to kill the embryo during this method. May cause unexpected results like cancer.

Cloning a human to give an adult my and the scientists opinion is nonsense. This is only a journalists abused idea to collect more oppositional. It will never be used for the army.

Answer 4

I think it's kind of interesting how people seem to be trying over and over to convince themselves that an embryo is not human so that they can do whatever they want with it. When it comes to cloning, I don't see this as any type of way around the abortion problem. If anything, i see it as only another step in the wrong direction..

A clone would still be a human being as much as any other human being, and creating human beings for the sake of harvesting them for experiments is just not cool.

I don't believe human beings should be used, or created to be used, as guinea pigs.

Answer 5

My opinion is it's a bad idea. For one thing, it's impossible. Remember recent news of the sucessful cloning of a sheep? The scientists were patting themselves on the back until it up and died at less than a year old for no known reason. And then thy tried to clone a cat-and it came out a calico, looking nothing at all like the cat it was cloned from. Science tells us no two snowflakes, no two grains of salt, nothing on this earth has an exact duplicate. Identical twins are born with different fingerprints, and that's just the beginning. Chang and Eng-conjoined twins made famous by master showman P.T. Barnum, and the original 'Siamese Twins' -were banded together until death, yet they had distinctly different personalities. So great were their differences that when they married[sisters], they maintained two separate households for the rest of their lives. Doctors estimate that approximately one-third of all pregnancies spontaneously abort without the woman ever realizing she was pregnant. That's natures way of dealing with an unhealthy embryo. What would be done with the unhealthy cloned embroyos? I think trying to clone human embryos is a statement as to how great the difference is between our social and technological development. Good luck on your essay.

Answer 6

Cloning cells and human embryos is then next logical step in this specific area of science. There is no good or bad about it. It is knowledge and any idea of good or bad is assigned to this knowledge is human and fallible. Take physics for example: the atomic bomb was a weapon created with the knowledge of modern physics. The knowledge has also created nuclear power plants. One is clearly good and one bad. Cloning can be used in the same manner. Using human embryos creates the ability to make specific cells that otherwise would be impossible as well as beneficial. The studies that evolve science, and knowledge, should be allowed to continue. It is the specific usage that should be under debate and not the development of scientific knowledge.

If religion ruled the development of science the world would still be flat.

Answer 7

I know it could do a lot of help, but cloning human embryos could potentially do a lot of harm. It could help the human race so much that eventually people will be living much longer lives, which will cause the issue of overcrowding, among other things. It would definitely help with diseases and such, but lots of harm could still be done. I was reading one entry about possibly being able to regrow limbs in the future. Think if one rich, powerful person decided to take over the world or destroy lots of innocent people, how would someone get rid of them if they are able to grow back limbs? That's a little outrageous, but it's a thought!

Ok back to your question....upside--People could live longer and more comfortably with fewer diseases, or cures if diseases are contracted. downside--overcrowding if people have longer lives, which also leads to poverty because there won't be enough jobs to support everyone nor money to pay for everyone. With overcrowding, something will have to be done to control the population, and not everyone will like the strict guidelines that will have to be enforced.

Lots of chaos would be caused, you're right, because so many religions are against the idea of cloning, or creating life.

Cloning, however, would push medicine much further and people who are paralyzed or are missing limbs might have a chance to better their lives. People with deadly illnesses might finally be cured.

Answer 8

I am absolutely against it, as I am against genetic engineering. The reason is that no matter how much society claims its for the good of the people dying in hospitals, that they're just trying prevent disease before it happens. That cloning would solve the organ problem, that they could cut up the clones and give the organs to people who need them.
Well there are problems morally and lawfully with these ideas. But the putting aside law and morals I dont think people will stop at just getting organs or preventing disease with genetic engineering. The problem is we want to know everything and be able to do everything as a society. And we are a very curious race over all, we wont just stop, people will want to play god ... it doesn't matter if you believe in god or not, they'll want to be like idea of god, to be able to control everything.
It'll start with preventing disease and helping people then you get to parents deciding the exact traits of their child before it's born, like custom ordering a baby. " I want blue eyes, blonde hair, a girl, 5' 6"..." and so on. This will create perfect people in the world. But real people arent perfect, then you divide the world in half : perfect vs not and you have world war 3. A conflict will eventually arise. Same with clones, just substitute perfect with clone.
Secondly cloning people will be like growing people. People will no longer people because we will no longer be able to define what exactly a person is. We will become a commodity one can order. Even so why do we need more people in this world? We're already overpopulated!
Thirdly, in the court of law I believe that even a clone would have the rights of a regular person. A clone may not have a soul or consciousness, depending on wether you believe in such things, but they can still feel pain and be aware of surroundings and be able to think. You cannot just cut up a live human being for your own purposes, even a clone. It would be murder.
I believe that cloning people has no upsides to it, not even as an organ donor. With the way science is going we will soon be able to grow organs right out of petri dishes and robotics has come so far that you can get a robotic arm that moves when you want it to move just by thinking of moving it.
The only upside of cloning is that we may be able to clone chickens and cows and such and give them to starving people in third world countries. It may help the problem of world hunger.

Answer 9

Cloning an embryo is fairly simple, it just involves dividing it before it gets much bigger than 16 cells. It happens naturally as has been already stated, in twins. It isn't something that requires some kind of huge cutting edge lab. Any controversy over the practice is based on ignorance and people disapproving of something because they've been told to. Simple embryo cloning isn't newsworthy. What they do with them afterward might be, but that would need to be specified to merit either approval or condemnation.

Answer 10

1) Why is it so bad to clone embryos? Its only what happens naturally during foetal development when identical twins form.

2) Surely its better to clone cells from an unfeeling ball of cells into, for example, a heart then to remove a heart from a dead person and put it into a live person?

Basically I think people focus way too much on the negatives when it comes to cloning. I think that as long as it only involves cloning cells at very early stages of development then its not only morally ok but important to investigate. Thanks to embryonic cloning soon you might be able to grow someone an arm or a leg back, and surely that can't be a bad thing?