The morality of cloning
Well, I was having some heated discussion with some friends about this issue and decided to post it here. The morality of cloning. Cloning is said to be a scientific outbreak and.. lol… a new chapter in our science texts. It’s not from me 
So, we’ll just go for the Wikipedia definition.
Cloning is the process of creating an identical copy of something
You all must know about cloning, so I wouldn’t get into much details. What actually caused the ‘heated’ discussion was whether cloning should be allowed or not. It is true that where cloning is concerned, some fear may arise, some doubts or even some dangers. After all, we are just allowing ourselves to wonder in the unknown, and well, who actually does know anything about this famous ‘unknown’.
Some may think that cloning is quite a recent discovery but actually it is not. I was even amazed to find that it dated back to 1885 when an urchin was cloned… by mistake. So, Dolly wasn’t actually the first one, huh? Cloning is said to be the solution to medical outbreaks but how many of us would be actually able to accept it?
One thing that comes in the way is religion.
A protest in cloning would defiantly be immense in the Catholic/Christian faith. According to their faith, “in the beginning God created man and woman and told them to reproduce … This was to be done within a Scriptural marriage of a man and his wife” (David E. Pratte, Cloning of humans, Gospel way).
There are some people that simply cannot accept the idea of having a human clone because this defies all the rules of their religion. Humans playing god by themselves, that’s how they see it. I have to say, that I am not totally for human cloning, but not because of the above reason. I’m mostly worried about the consequences that could occur because of that.
Theoretically speaking, there would be no difference between a human clone and a normal human being. Hmmm… aren’t I already classifying the two in different categories already. Did you see where I am going to? The difference in how they were made would be what would bother us all. If you were to cut the ‘normal’ one, he would bleed as much as the clone would, but still, humans simply cannot get to this idea that someone different from them is actually living in the same way they are.
Difference between us is what makes us have prejudice and discriminate. Difference between us is what will make us be prejudiced and discriminate. Discrimination has a negative impact on society and indirectly, human cloning would influence society, well, in not such a good way.
Cloning can be useful and can be accepted by us, only if we humans are accepting to play the fair way. In wrong hands, it could certainly be risky, if not to say, totally dangerous. Cloning of a lost love one, wrong idea. Bringing back the dead to life, that’s what certainly some people would want to do. Biologically speaking, the clone would be identical to the ‘original’ one but nobody guarantees the psychological state of the clone.
But then, cloning isn’t just about human clones and anything else. There is also stem cell research going on, where you can replace an arm or leg or any other parts of the body. Wouldn’t that be useful? Say you suddenly lost an arm, wouldn’t you like to have it replaced. I think that it actually a good thing. For after all, an amputation can freak anybody out, but that’s just know the issue here. Having your kidney replaced or something like that, that would be could. Rather than being on the long waiting list to have a compatible donor to save your life, you could save your own. Better than xeno-transplantation.
Other things come to mind when cloning is concerned. Dolly died prematurely, which questions everyone on this age issue. The clone might be young, but the DNA might be older which can be a reason why the clone could have diseases that usually occur in later stages of life.
The discussion even went to comparing humans and animals and so on. Long one it was and not yet over, just as this post is getting longer and me getting more sleepy I’ll just end it here, with hope that some of you might share with me some of your thoughts. 
A clone is nothing more, or less, than an identical twin. Anyone who has known twins also knows that being genetically identical is far from being identical. They are separate people.
I have never been able to understand how anybody gets confused by that concept. A clone is a twin. Simple and straightforward. Anybody who argues that there is something inherently wrong with creating identical twins has a screw loose, IMHO.
I can see that people may have issues about the motivations of people who want to create identical twins of themselves or others. I have issues about people who want to have twelve kids, or who won’t stop having kids until one of them is a boy (or a girl, whichever). There is practically no aspect of human behavior that some group or another is not going to have issues with.
The only ethical considerations I see really have to do with the cloning process itself. It’s not perfect. It’s not completely understood.
As an aside, natural reproduction is neither perfect nor completely understood, either, but that doesn’t stop people from doing it.
But there are known problems with every cloning process I’ve heard of so far. Either the clones have proved to be in some way, defective, or the question is still being resolved as to whether they are defective or not.
Once the process is perfected, I can’t see any reason why people shouldn’t go ahead and do it. Most people who want kids want to share their genetic material, making the child a product of a couple, so I don’t think considerations of losing genetic diversity are an issue.
The only reason I can think of as to why people would be inherently opposed to cloning is ignorance.
KnotKeats said this on December 22, 2007 at 10:34 pm
An emotive topic choice and I commend your raising the issue here.
Science will always find ways to bring about changes and the ethics of such is often placed to one side.
From a medical prospective – issues of advances to aid life – and the quality thereof – has in itself the emotions one can see in hospitals, and within the eyes of anxious loved ones.
Can the line ever be defined ……..
bergerac said this on December 22, 2007 at 10:38 pm
I do agree with Knotkeats that a clone is no more than an identical twin. I read a book this summer called, “Never Let Me Go” by Kazuo Ishiguro, which is a fiction about making clones for the purpose of organ donation. Although that was the topic, it made me think of things closer to home for me, like what we take for granted, how people have lives that suck, yet accept what they have been given, how even in adversity, people can find love and contentment in life. We are not just bones and flesh and DNA, we are also a product of our experience, our environment and our thought processes which themselves are products of what we eat, the amount of sleep we get, our environment, our physical health and what we choose. Good post.
Dawn said this on December 23, 2007 at 1:22 am
hmm nice idea indeed… though u barely scratched the surface of the problem itself. cloning as it is (as u said in the paragraph before last) has some defects all clones’ DNA are the same age as the original donor’s that is if the donor is 40 the clone’s DNA will be 40 and as a matter of fact all cell DNA have a specific lifespan after which it undergoes self destruction and death of the nuclease and consequently of the cell>organ and organism. so even if the clone will be still in appearance, physiology and mentality, a child he will actually have older DNA (well i tried to explain it as simply as i could) as for stem cell… well that actually sounds great but then the drawback is stem cell in already born children and consequently adults does not exist…. those cells are already specialised once we are born. so basically to obtain unspecialised cells we should acquire them from fetus. this will result in severe deformity in an unborn child or even its death. stem cell regeneration is very promising (an experiment in 1998-2000 proved that it can regenerate even damaged nerves and cure complete paralysis) but it’s actually illegal in most countries. the latest development in the matter in question will be the artificial synthesis of stem cells but then that’s still only theoretical till now with a considerable amount of unfortunate drawbacks
viru5 said this on December 23, 2007 at 6:42 am
the misconception that many people have, mainly from watching old sci-fi movies is that a clone of themselves will look like them and think like them and have their memories.
a clone will just be an identical replica of a person but a little younger than the original one . i don’t really agree with cloning. it is artificial in my opinion.
morinn said this on December 23, 2007 at 10:11 pm
Cloning is a subject that is going to create divides between people for decades. I guess it really depends on the purpose for cloning. Like most good things in the world, someone will use it for an advantage. Take athletes. Do we clone them for their country so that they can perform better when they grow up? Plus I am sure they would add a few genes to make a better athlete. That is kind of like dog breeding to me. Keep on breeding until you get a superior breed.
If it was used for the betterment of the world in say…helping to eradicate certain diseases..then I wouldn’t have a problem with it. Of course, I’m not sure I would be a candidate for cloning but I do have some enduring traits
Sirdar said this on December 24, 2007 at 12:55 am
Right, cloning for no reason doesn’t seem right to me, and it isn’t a good use of resources either. But now there is work being done to extract stem cells from skin cells, so what might be cloning’s greatest asset could disappear.
moneysworthless said this on December 25, 2007 at 4:43 am
aligato urahara
viru5 said this on December 25, 2007 at 5:07 pm
hi
moneysworthless said this on December 26, 2007 at 9:07 am
I wish I had a link to the original article I’m thinking about, but while clones are only identical twins in terms of being a copy of the original individual genome, the expression of the genes changes after conception, and can even change after birth.
Heres a link citing changes after comception:
http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/001692.html
Ah. Here’s the link I was looking for changes in genetic expression after birth:
http://discovermagazine.com/2006/nov/cover/article_view?b_start:int=2&-C=
So, even if we perfect making a clone the same as an identical twin, identical twins don’t necessarily have identical genetic expression.
KnotKeats said this on December 28, 2007 at 3:47 am
Thank you everyone =)
bbZuSh said this on December 28, 2007 at 9:50 pm