Individuality Vs. the Perfect WorldJoin now to read essay Individuality Vs. the Perfect WorldImagine the world as only beautiful people. Everywhere you look is a Cindy Crawford look-a-like: 5’9”, brown hair, brown eyes, and the perfect smile. A “Master Race.” Do we really want to reenact Adolf Hitler’s plan of seeking world domination killing million upon millions as a “final solution?” Instead of killing, we’d be reproducing millions, going against nature. Say we went and got one of Princess Diana’s cells and implanted that in an egg that was then placed into a surrogate mother. Nine months later, we would have a baby Princess Diana. Only trouble is, this baby would only resemble Princess Diana in looks, not personality, character, or individuality. Her whole life wouldn’t be what it had been; she wouldn’t be “her.” What if your newborn son died? Just think; you could have a second chance. Is this morally or ethnically right? Cloning of humans should be forbidden, but cloning of human body parts for medicinal purposes should be allowed.
Cloning hasn’t been a big issue or ever thought to have actually been made to work until 1997 with the successful birth of a lamb named Dolly. Out of 277 eggs implanted in different sheep mothers, Dolly was the only lamb successfully born. The method used to clone Dolly was scientists at the Roslin Institute in Scotland took a cell out of the mammary gland. They then used an electrical pulse to coax an adult cell into merging with a host egg whose nucleus had been removed (Hoon). This method being very unsuccessful brought on a new one where scientists used mice, injecting just the adult nucleus into a nucleus free host instead of using an electrical pulse. They also had let it set for two hours before stimulating it to start dividing. The success rate was 2-3 in 100. Now knowing that we could clone sheep and mice, scientists were up to the possibility and challenge of cloning humans. As soon as it became public knowledge that cloning was really happening and becoming more successful, President Clinton imposed a ban on federal funding for human-cloning research. Several states have established restrictions, some even banning cloning completely (Masci 420).
Cloning is not morally or ethnically right. Morally, scientists would be taking the role of God. If a clone dies, where would they go? In religious beliefs, clones would have no souls because God didn’t create them. Cloning would alter the definition of ourselves. To clone a dead person with their DNA would only make another person that would look exactly the same minus their personality, character, talents, memories, scars, and life. Can you imagine raising a cloned child? As he/she grew up it wouldn’t be the same. They would be thought of as a “special child”, that is if they were even born correctly. The odds of even having a human clone born with out defects are very, very slim. The child would go through grade school probably all right until it come time for family life. He/she comes home and it is now your time to explain the “birds and bees” speech. Are you going to explain that he/she is different than all other kids and is a big scientific study or are you going to lie? Either way, you’re going to have to live with the consequences. Dolly was cloned from a sheep cell that was about six years old, a middle age for an ewe. So this means that when Dolly was born she was technically six years old. This would mean that she would only be expected to live for five years, which would in truth be shorter than the normal lifespan of eleven years. If this was true, and humans were cloned, their lifespan would be shorter also. This was proved wrong, but if Dolly was born being six years old, she’d be about ten years old right now, and old age. Does this mean that she is only going to live two more years or nine more? Life isn’t a toy; it’s a very serious thing. You were brought on to this planet for a reason and cloning doesn’t seem to be a good enough one.
Cloning would deplete genetic diversity. It is diversity that drives evolution and adaptation (Robinson). Each person is born with a mixture of chromosomes from a mother and father sexually with the egg and fertilization from sperm. The new cell is called a zygote, which then multiplies, creating new cells all with that same DNA (Stonebarge). Cloning would be creating a person non-sexually. The baby would only possess the DNA of one person. As you look around, do you see everyone looking exactly the same? No, and this is variety, except for the few exceptions where about 1/1000 births are identical twins. “Identical twins are each other’s clones, they happen because a single cell, for no reason splits and permits to separate embryos to form such a cell called a zygote. Identical twins are, therefore know as monozygotic” (Ebon 95). One of the arguments for human cloning is that it would help science to find out whether heredity or
machines may be different‖ or not. I do not think this is an issue. But the problem is that cloning is not something that can happen. Some of the arguments for human cloning involve very different criteria to do so than that for genetic medicine. There is no such thing as human-derived genetic modification (GMO) or genetic engineering (genetics). Human cells can reproduce. Human embryos are the result of artificial stem cell technology. It is not the responsibility of the “geneticsists” or the “gene technologists” or even of the “natural biologists” to think about the DNA of a particular person, or the sex and the egg and so on. The “natural scientists” or “geneticsists” don’t even know that human cells are involved in the sexual reproduction of the organism on the basis of natural selection. They have the power to make life for humans, by natural selection, and I think that is what the “science” is actually against in the human genetic-engineering debate. I do not say that cloning does or does not constitute genetic modification. I say that all of the arguments for human cloning are quite different.
What is important here is the idea that when some organism, an individual with unique characteristic traits, does develop or continue to develop or develop new genetic traits, those traits are identical. All of those other traits are identical, and then those other traits cannot be replicated (and then those other traits are never replicated, or never created). But genetic engineering does not create two identical traits that should never existed. If scientists do make a new trait and all those other traits are identical, what is the point of making that new trait a unique trait so that other scientists may not replicate the traits? I don’t agree that they will. Is there a problem? No, there doesn’t have. But scientists do create a new trait, and it is so because they create a different trait. We do this because in many cases scientists have developed novel ways to create new traits. To say that new genetic traits can or can’t be replicated, is not really a problem. But there is a second question, which arises from the fact that we are the only world population that has any chance at replicating the DNA sequences of two people. In other words: We are the only world population with any chance at replicating the DNA sequences of two people. That could happen, but given that I don’t even mind mentioning it in this discussion, let me just note that the only way that this would happen is if a gene or a DNA sequence of two people arose that replicates other people’s traits. (That the one that would replicate the other trait would occur does not count as “genetic engineering.” So it is true that there is a genetic engineering process.)
The issue is why are we making genetic engineering in the first place? It could be because we are making certain kinds of organisms from parts of animal life, or some parts of human life that need to be protected because of our human biology. I don’t know. What we are saying is that we are trying to create our own “genetic engineering”. However, that isn’t true. We are making some sorts of things that our ancestors have not already done. For example, we are telling those Neanderthals that they could have no sex, and the answer to who that is is now unknown. And those Neanderthals are just saying “No, we’re not making this happen. We want