Essay, Research Paper: Cloning

Human Cloning Ever since the cloning of the sheep, people have been wondering weather it is morally right to clone. Now the time has come where we can clone human beings and now people are even more worried about weather it is right or wrong. The thing that many religious people don t like, is that cloning was never mentioned in the Bible. They believe that this means that God has no intention for us to clone humans so of course we shouldn t even think about it. There are may other ethical groups that just think that cloning is to much like becoming God. Richard Seed, the man who intends to clone a human, does think that we should become one with God and says that cloning is bringing us closer to God. Seed says God made man in his own image. God intended for man to become one with God. We are going to become one with God. W are going to have almost as much knowledge and almost as much power as God does. Cloning and the reprogramming of DNA, is the first serious step in becoming one with God. Seeds main reason for wanting to clone a human is to help those people who aren't physically able to have children on there own. The question is, is this O.K.? There are many complications to cloning that we do not think of right away. It would be great to have a clone, or to make the perfect person, but is it morally right? Many people are worried that cloning will take away persons individuality. It is true that a person s clone will look identical, but they actually will end up a little different in the long run.(Eibert pg3) The thing is, when you clone a person, all you really clone is there body, not there memories. So the clone will know nothing that the original person knows. Clones are like identical twins, they both look the same, but they think differently. So we could clone anyone, but they would not be the exact same people because of what they might experience in life. For instance, if we cloned John F. Kennedy, The clone would not remember ever being shot, or ever being president. Another thing is that if you cloned Babe Ruth, but never exposed the clone to baseball, the clone probably would not be good at baseball. But, if the clone was exposed to baseball every day of its life it might end up better at baseball then the original Babe Ruth.(Alton pg3) This is only one of the problems with cloning. There are also many others who disagree with cloning.
The long term genetic effects of cloning may cause more problems than can be imagined. The question of what can go wrong in cloning needs to be discussed. In an evolutionary standpoint, cloning is not good. Evolution relies on continual mixing and matching of genes to keep the gene pool alive. With cloning, the natural process of selection of genes would be bypassed and evolution would be impaired. (McCormack) There also is a fear that clones will be treated differently, either treated as better humans or as more like a slave to humans. There has always been the case that we could use clones for their organs, or to just clone organs for those who need them. Some have even suggested that we could make a whole army of clones. But, all this again explains that we would treat clones as less than human beings, which is not right. From The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints point of view, the Proclamation on the Family does not agree with cloning. The Proclamation states We ... declare that God has commanded that the sacred powers of procreation are to be employed only between man and woman, lawfully wedded as husband and wife. We declare the means by which mortal life is created to be divinely appointed. We affirm the sanctity of life and of its importance in God s plan. In other words, the power to create humans is only to be used in a marriage between husband and wife. Cloning only involves one person and so it no longer follows God s plan. There are many more reasons why we should not allow cloning to be made possible. It took scientists many tries before they successfully cloned animals, and the tries that weren t successful are probably something you don t want to see. Since human cloning is supposedly harder to accomplish than animal cloning, the success rate could be much worse and the failures are not something we want to have happen.