Human Cloning
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Human Cloning:
A Look at the Effects of Human Cloning
Abstract
This paper consists of research of partial and whole cloning of animals and humans. The research will focus on the methods used to clone animals and humans, and the ethical problems surrounding the consequences. The argument will target the positive and negative effects of human cloning, specifically.
Human Cloning:
A look at the Effects of Human Cloning
No one knows what type of and how much cloning is allowed. Many people believe that cloning is unrestricted and scientists can attempt it as often as they would like. In addition, the publics lacks of knowledge is kept high due to scientists fear to share the outcomes of any cloning experiments. Scientists are hesitant to share their outcomes because they think that it will scare the public. To them, the more afraid the public is, the less likely they are to tolerate it
(Gibbs, 48). Some pro-life lawmakers do not want fears about cloning to stop other kinds of stem-cell research that do not entail the manufacturing of embryos. Therefore, lawmakers want stem-cell research, but do not want whole cloning. Again this makes laws too broad, unrestricted, and not able to understand. If lawmakers cannot decide whether cloning is right or wrong, who will? At the present date, there are only three proposed bills that federally restrict certain forms of cloning. Along with Illinois, seven other states have proposed a bill to ban the cloning of an entire individual, regardless of funding sources. A substantial amount of cloning controversies come to what types of cloning should be allowed. Lawmakers fear banning cloning because then they would have to face the decision to include stem-cell research or not.
This problem has put lawmakers decisions on cloning at a halt, causing the public to be unsure and to believe that cloning is unrestricted. What are both positive and negative effects on human cloning?
Currently, there are no rules in place regarding the use of animals in cloning experiments. Disregarding any ethical boundaries, scientists continue to clone animals. According to Cloning
Ethics After two hundred and seventy-seven tries Dolly was finally created. Obviously many of the unsuccessful sheep suffered from birth defects or diseases. Experiments were performed on mice to try to determine the life expectancy of clones and studies show they die prematurely.
Supporters of the research of cloning realize that there are fewer problems caused by the cloning of animals rather than humans, and they make sure to take full advantage of this fact. As long as scientists are able to cover the massive numbers of experiments being conducted on animals, those who are strongly opposed to any type of animal experimentation will not be aware of the procedures and will not make an issue of the moral beliefs being broken.
Even though the United States government never gave funding explicitly for cloning experiments, organizations have been able to indirectly acquire money to support their experiments. After the creation of Dolly, President Clinton banned the use of all federal funds towards human cloning; furthermore, has asked the Natl Bioethics Advisory Commission to investigate the implications of human and animal cloning. Senator Christopher Bond introduced legislation to prohibit the use of federal funds for research involving human cloning. At the same time, U.S. Representative Vernon Ehlers introduced a similar bill and proposed a second to make it illegal to clone a human (“Cloning Raises”). As of yet, there are no national laws to prevent private companies from conducting cloning research, even though it is illegal in some states.
In other countries, governments are opposing cloning as well. The European Union passed a moratorium on all government funding of cloning experiments, as has Australia (Hall, 1). Even though cloning has always been dreamed of in scientific research; however, the government knows it is not perfected enough to be considered for government funding. This is demonstrated from the proposed legislation to ban therapeutic and reproductive human cloning that was passed in the House but stalled in the Senate (Boyle, 2). Sadly, the laws that are intended to keep cloning limited are too broad and hold avenues to break through regulations.
Even though many lawmakers want to prevent cloning from becoming too popular, they are hesitant to pass restrictive legislation as they are afraid to halt research that could be beneficial (“Cloning Raises”). This almost occurred when Florida considered a law that would have barred cloning of human DNA, which is a common biomedical procedure in research (Nash, 1). No evidence of actual human clones exists. Human cloning cannot be considered a success because there has been no evidence provided to support its existence. There are various claims that have made; however, none of them prove to be true. Clonaid, an organization linked to a group called Raelians, a cult-like group that believes human life was created through cloning and genetic engineering by visiting aliens, made a false claim stating a thirty-one year old
American woman gave birth to her own cloned baby December 26, 2002. This is one of the multiple counterfactual allegations. According to ABC News, a team of scientists was denied access to the mother and baby. This made it impossible to determine the status of the baby, clone or not. With this lack of viable documentation, demonstrates the non-existence of clones, and the attempts made to keep potentially negative outcomes under the table.
Many attempts to clone animals have been made. A few of these have been successful to short periods of time, others have failed immediately. Very few attempts have been deemed successful and even fewer remain so. The majority of animal clones are born with severe birth defects. Many of the clones experience obesity, seizures, tremors, severe cardiovascular
problems, joint problems, and thymous problems (Boyle, 2). These problems are not evident at birth making it difficult, if not impossible, to track them. The sheep named, Dolly, who was suspected to be the most successful animal clone eventually died prematurely at the age of six (Knight, 1). She developed a lung disease that normally develops in older sheep. The normal
life