Is cloning humans a good idea ? why?

Answer 1

.In any cloned organism, the emergent clone begins life at the biological age of the donor-organism. This would mean that if the cell-donor was a 35yo human, the resultant baby would begin life at a biological age of 35. There is no way at the moment to suppres or reverse this. Any cloned human would NOT necessarily be identical in behaviors and knowledge to the host, as the clone's psychology and intellect are dependent on environment. I will not debate religious or ethical issues involved, as those are subjective in nature. I will say that, given the cell-age factor, and there being no NEED for human cloning, our reproductive capabilities being more than sufficient for continuation of the species, human cloning would be unnecessary

Answer 2

It depends what you mean by cloning. I am all for therapeutic cloning. This is where you create a clone of someone to make embryonic stem cells that perfectly match that person (see http://www.thetech.org/genetics/news.php?id=18 for a discussion of the subject). You only let the cloned embryo make it to a few hundred cells before you get the embryonic stem cells from it. You can then use those stem cells to cure a variety of illnesses.

Reproductive cloning is probably not a good idea. This is where you take the cloned embryo, put it into a surrogate mother and let it grow into a baby. Given how important the environment is to what we become, the odds are that the clone won't be much like the original. Sort of like an identical twin born years after the first one.

Answer 3

It's a terrible idea, for ethical reasons and practical reasons. Even if we could clone other mammals and have them turn out healthy and fine (which we can't do reliably at this time) we would not know for sure whether we could do it with humans until we tried. And what if we tried and it went wrong as the first shot at any science experiment often does? How would you feel about somebody being born really messed up because they're your failed science experiment?

Also, I am not sure there is much practical value in cloning humans. Since clones do not turn out phenotypically identical to the animal they're genetically identical to, due to gene imprinting issues and environmental factors, it's not like we could clone humanity's most brilliant thinkers or most dedicated humanitarians and replicate them. We already have a pretty good way to create more humans that vaguely resemble their parents (It's called s-e-x) so why would we need to clone people? I'd rather see research dollars spent on solving a real problem.

Answer 4

Well, before we jump to the answers we should learn about cloning.

Of course the idea of human cloning seems not that good for a lot of people, but we should know that if we are able to clone the human we will be able to prevent and find the treatment for a lot of diseases. So it is about the knowledge not the cloning.

Answer 5

There is something very unsettling about the arguments given in favor of cloning. For example, one argument is for couples who have lost a child and want him/her back. The other arguments are just as eerie as this.

Cloning organs is a good idea. If you need a heart transplant, a cloned heart would be much better than the best of matches. It would require no immunosuppresive drugs, and would entail far fewer complications than donor organs. But there should be no further cloning beyond replacement organs. There's just no reason to.

Answer 6

I don't think so, for a variety of reasons.

It took a great deal of effort to clone the animals that have already been cloned (e.g. sheep, mice, etc.), requiring a large number of eggs "fertilized" by somatic cell nuclear transfer implanted into a large number of surrogates, and even then the success rate was extremely low. Human cloning is likely to be even more difficult, as it is almost impossible to even obtain embryonic stem cells using somatic cell nuclear transfer, as shown by the recent scandal in South Korea. One reason, then, that I think human cloning is not a good idea is that it is not practical to obtain the number of eggs and surrogates necessary to obtain a successful clone, and generation of such a large number of ultimately non-viable embryos does not seem ethically sound.

Furthermore, it seems that cloned animals experience premature aging and likely have shorter lifespan than non-cloned animals (e.g. Dolly the sheep), likely due to the shortened telomeres present in the somatic cells used for nuclear transfer. Creation of a cloned human who may age prematurely and suffer the associated health problems is also ethically problematic.

Answer 7

Maybe if they can do it without complications. Anyway, environment and experience play such a big role in human development you're not going to get the same person - you could, for example, clone Hitler or Bin Laden and wind up with a nice person, or clone a good person a wind up with a serial killer depending on many variables.

Answer 8

I'm inclined to say no, simply because I can't see the benefit of it. Why would you need to clone a human? For spare parts? To conduct genetics experiments on? No possible use for clones seems very ethical.

Answer 9

I don't think so. First of all, it would require a lot of money and there's a lot of risk involved. The clone may not live long. Did you check out the story about Dolly? She's a cloned sheep but couldn't survive long because of all sorts of organ failures.

Answer 10

No. The process of cloning would be fraught with problematic variables and the clones would be the ones to suffer them. This is similar to bad people having kids. The parents who brought the kids into this world make bad decisions at every step of life and the innocent kids suffer for it.