Research Paper Example: Should Cloning Continue to be Researched and Applied to Society?
From Gemini Man to Logan to Jurassic Park to Star Wars; clones have been portrayed throughout the last 5 decades, but what would really happen if cloning could be utilized in today’s society? Would cloning be accepted by the people, or will the immorality of cloning stop it dead in its tracks? On the surface cloning is making an identical or virtually identical copy of an organism or parts of an organism and with cloning we can make copies of organs or other things to save many lives in the future, but where cloning is immoral is in the high mortality rate and bodily harm.
The potential to save lives through cloning organs can help lead to medical innovation and other advancements in the future. For things such as cloning organs through therapeutic cloning. Because of stem cells and or cloned organs created from stem cells which “could potentially be transplanted into the original donor and would be recognized by the body as genetically identical, thereby circumventing the problems of rejection and immunosuppression which may occur with transplants from unrelated donors” (Ballaro). This means that the future as well as the current over 100,000 people on the transplant list could be saved from cloning. Using stem cells also has another potential advantage since “Not only are stem cells capable of being programmed to develop into specialized tissues and organs but, unlike ordinary cells, they also possess the ability to divide and thus yield more stem cells” (Ballero). Using this it can somewhat counter the immoralities of what people against cloning are arguing about because there would be no embryos to be directly killed. Cloning can also help with the potential cures for medical issues and could help prevent diseases that we currently don't have the technology for. Medical advancements for the future need to be made, but thankfully we have already taken a huge step forward with the ability to utilize stem cells to its fullest potential. One of the Authors of The Cloning Debate: The Future is Burdened by its Past, Nancy Sprague, holds a BS degree and a Masters Degree in Health Policy furthermore she began her career in health care as a registered nurse for many years says “Few leading medical researchers dispute the extraordinary potential of stem cells to reshape the way the medical establishment addresses disease” she continues in talking about other potentials of stem cells and how they can be applied in medicine. With all of this information shown it would be impertinent for society to move forward and accept cloning and keep continuing to use it and research it for a better tomorrow.
The staggeringly high risks of continuing to research and test cloning should make it clear to stop. According to Wayne Pacelle, senior vice president of the Humane Society of the United States, has cited an experiment performed by Texas A&M University to create cloned pigs “in which only 28 pigs survived from over 500 attempts, and one was born without an anus or a tail”. Only 5.6% of all of the lives put on the line for some experiment lived. This data is appalling. Just imagine if the test subjects were humans, the scientists involved would be tried for so many crimes. This isn’t the first time something like this happened, let’s take Dolly the sheep, the first cloned mammal. With the first cloned animal being created the lead up was horrific. “There were 277 attempts made before Dolly, the first cloned sheep, was produced. The dangers to an impregnated woman and to the embryo are very high—miscarriage, stillbirth, and deformity or other abnormality is likely. Even if the science is sound, there is no consensus on the social and ethical issues that cloning humans would entail” (Sampsell). There was no need for such death for only one life to be created. Was a 0.36% success rate really worth all of the carnage? It would be equivalent to flipping a coin having it land on the side. According to the scientist and American science journalist, Gina Kolata, She says "Destroying these 'chimeric' embryos to get stem cells might not be objectionable to opponents of most stem cell research, the researchers said, since the chimeras were created from embryos with 'virtually no chance' of becoming a baby”. So with the already incredibly low chance of success in cloning scientists are taking one life just attempting to create another which will more than likely fail and it will die. Cloning is playing with fire, experimenting with life just to create death, quite the double-edged sword.
What are the overall thoughts from the people who want to continue or stop cloning? According to Beverly Ballaro, cloning has the potential to save so many people right now if we continue to try and perfect therapeutic cloning “However, waiting until researchers have perfected these methods would morally fail the millions of sick and injured human beings who currently stand to benefit from therapeutic cloning”. Although cloning has not been perfected, it has already shown promising developments for the future of science and medicine. Take organ transplants for example, the success rate of an organ transplant after 5 years is 44% and gets lower and lower as the years go by, but using cloning the body would recognize the organ as normal since it would be created from the transplant recipient's own body. “What if you could eliminate the wait time and risky odds with traditional organ transplants by creating custom, cloned organs from your own cells that your body would recognize? Cloning advocates have touted this type of science as therapeutic cloning. This is different from reproductive cloning since therapeutic cloning deals with embryos only, not human babies carried to term” (Conger). Cloning has the potential to save many lives as well as further our growth as a society and a better future. Although not everyone is on the same page when it comes to accepting cloning into society. “Less than 10 percent of Americans support all three types of cloning. Many Roman Catholics and Protestants are ambivalent towards recombinant DNA technology, but view reproductive and therapeutic cloning as immoral. Other groups view one or more types of cloning as a gross intrusion on nature and animal rights, irrespective of religious issues.” (Driscoll). Cloning does go against many religious beliefs so it wouldn't be a stretch for their worshipers to be against cloning. Also with the deaths of many animals for even a single life is very concerning and has a lot of people worried about cloning. With these ethical reasons along with the morality and legality of cloning it is hard for many people to trust it and its outcome. According to Sally Driscoll “Reproductive cloning produces new life through the replication of DNA obtained from another individual. However, reproductive cloning is extremely problematic on legal, ethical and moral levels”. So overall cloning is taking the lives of animals and other living things for the sake of some idealistic future utopia for which that ideal is disregarding the essence of humanity and life.
The potential of human cloning can’t be denied, but how that is achieved is what is contraversial. One solution for this is to use other means of cloning with the stem cells and usage of the stem cells from skin. The use of embryonic stem cells is one of the main reasons and the amount of deaths could be changed by only having a limited number of test subjects. So in the end should cloning be researched and applied to society? Well that's for the people to decide.
Works Cited
Ballaro, Beverly, and Nancy Sprague. “Point: The Medical and Moral Advantages of Cloning.” Points of View: Cloning, Mar. 2016, p. 2. EBSCOhost, https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=pwh&AN=26611687&site=pov-live&scope=site.
Conger, Cristen. “Could We Clone Our Organs to be Used in a Transplant?” Science | HowStuffWorks, 16 September 2008, https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/genetic/cloned-organ-transplant.htm. Accessed 19 January 2022.
Driscoll, Sally, and Ann Griswold. “Counterpoint: Human Cloning Treats Human Life as a Commodity.” Points of View: Cloning, Mar. 2016, p. 3. EBSCOhost, https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=pwh&AN=26611685&site=pov-live&scope=site
Kolata, Gina Bari. Clone : the road to Dolly, and the path ahead. Allen Lane, 1997.
Sampsell, Kate. "The Cloning Debate: The Future is Burdened by its Past." History Behind the Headlines: The Origins of Conflicts Worldwide, edited by Sonia G. Benson, et al., vol. 6, Gale, 2003. Gale In Context: High School, link.gale.com/apps/doc/EJ2309006007/SUIC?u=mnsminitex&sid=bookmark-SUIC&xid=aafbf011. Accessed 19 Jan. 2022.
