Essay, Research Paper: Human Cloneing

Seth Garnar

What would you do if you had the power to make an exact clone of yourself? The topic of human cloning has become a center of focus lately. Some people want to ban it while others don't. My view on the topic is that there should be a temporary ban on it until we know more about it. In this paper I will briefly explain how human cloning is accomplished and explain my reason for a temporary ban.
Embryo splitting or blastomere separation is what is most commonly referred to as human cloning. Embryos in the early stages of development start to divide into cells called blastomeres. The zona pellucida (a protective covering for the egg) is punctured
or removed and the blastomeres are separated from each other. Each blastomere is then covered with an artificial zona pellucida. Then each of the blastomeres starts dividing and becomes an embryo. Hall and Stillman attempted this in 1993. They used embryos that contained too much genetic information and got as far as 32-cell divisions in some the embryos. At this stage the embryo can be implanted in the womb.
My first reason for a temporary ban is that we do not know what the side effects of cloning are. We know that it took over 200 sheep before we had one cloned sheep that turned out normal. We should look into how to prevent odds like this before we clone any human. If we do clone humans and end up with deformed offspring what should we do with them? All of this must be looked at before we start to clone a human.
My second reason is based on ethics. If we clone a human who controls it? We must decide who will control clones and what rights they will have if any, once they are born. We must also ask ourselves what gives us the right to make a clone. A very popular question in the ethics area is "Are we playing god?". Before we clone a human we must look at theses questions and decide if it is morally right to make a clone.
My third reason is what happens if this technology get out of hand. Being able to make clones will let any group of people to make a clone. If this happens our government or any other government could make an army of clones to fight in a war. For example, a government could take their best fighter and clone him/her making maybe 4000 clones just like him/her. We have to setup a very detailed set of laws explaining what and what not can be done if human cloning becomes a reality.
There are many reasons why we should clone a human. For example we could make a clone of our self and take out the genes for thought and store the clone someplace and when we need any body part take it from the clone. We could also make a clone of a child that was lost by an death. This would make it possible for parents to have their child back in a physical way. I think that my evidence for a human cloning ban is stronger then the two examples I have stated here. Making a human body warehouse has many ethical questions, such as: do we have the right to take away a person's thoughts and use their body parts for our personal use. To me this would be very selfish. If a couple were able to make a clone of a dead child would they want it? The physical appearance would be the same but would the memories of the clone be the same as the child that had died? This we will never know until we spend more time studying the effects of cloning.
Personally I think we should put a temporary ban on human cloning until we have more information about the technology used and what the results will be. But in the end it all comes down to the lawmakers of our nation, and I hope that they will make a good informed law about human cloning.