Cloning

Common Reasons People Support Cloning

• Support of scientific research

• Recovery of lost loved ones

• Infertility: cloning a fertile copy of themselves

• Eugenics*: making a superhuman race

• Creation of spare body parts**

• Reproduction of their own qualities

* Eugenics: There are many people who believe the human race would be better off if specific traits could be chosen and others deleted. For example, scientists could eliminate all the disease-causing genes, guaranteeing a healthy baby. They could also give that baby enhanced vision and hearing, extreme intelligence, or a supermodel’s body. This has many ethicists and theologians worried, however, for they feel that eugenics is tampering with God’s plan.

** Spare body parts: Many people like this idea because injured people would no longer need cumbersome prosthetic equipment, but could instead have a new flesh-and-blood hand or leg in its place! And this idea isn’t just limited to limbs--it includes most every organ: the heart, bone marrow, lungs, blood, kidneys, colon, and so on.

Present Benefits of Cloning

Many benefits to humans have come about as a result of cloning:

Gene positional cloning is a major medical advancement, not only because of cloning, but because of the Human Genome Project as well. The goal of this procedure is to identify human disease genes and then clone them for further study. This is done by studying several families who have the disorder. The gene for Huntington’s Disease was found this way by examining a large