Human Cloning: To Clone or Not To Clone

Cloning techniques are the most significant breakthrough of science in late twentieth century. Human cloning is a technique used to create an artificial genetically identical human being which can be achieved either therapeutically or reproductively. In 2013, a public poll conducted in United States by YouGov asked one thousand American “Should scientists be allowed to clone human beings?”, the research had found only 16percent responded “Yes, they should.”, in contrast, 66 percent responded “No, they should not.”, and 18 percent responded “Not sure.”. This ultramodern technique had raise controversial debates based on medical and ethical concerns. Human cloning will undoubtedly lead to unforeseeable disasters to entire human race. The utterly low successful rate had indicated a tremendous possibility of failure in human cloning.

        Animal cloning results in a low successful rate. Scientists have been cloning different animals insuppressibly for the past 30 years, sheep, mouse and cows are often cloned, however, it has been shown that the successful cloning rate fluctuates between one to four percent. Dr. Ian Wilmut, the scientist who created Dolly the sheep – the first mammal cloned by somatic cell nuclear transfer, said “Just 1 to 4 percent of cloning efforts in the species where it has worked results in the birth of a live animal. That, indicates that cloning appears to create serious abnormalities in almost all embryos.” In a like manner, Dr. Tanja Dominko, an expert in cloning, also commented on her research on cloning, “After three years, and about 300 attempts, the best she got was a placenta with no fetus. Most of the time, she saw grotesquely abnormal embryos containing cells without chromosomes… or cells that looked more like cancer cells than the cells of a healthy animal.” Having the precedent of failure in animal cloning, scientist should be cautious in applying such complicated techniques in human beings, since cloning had shown to be related to abnormalities and short life expectancy. Likewise, human cloning may also lead to ethical issues.

        Human cloning may raise concerns of human rights. For instance, providing you are allowed to make a clone of yourself, should your clone also be allowed to clone itself? Besides, whether we should classify human clones as human, and grant them human rights? These are the buzz topics on-going in society and among hysteria professional and scientists. “And many clones have turned out to suffer sometimes devastating congenital defects, a situation that has led many experts in animal cloning to condemn human reproduction by cloning as unethical.” The awfully high unsuccessful cloning rate had suggested that creating life for the purpose of research and destroying life born abnormal are conflicting with the right to live of the human embryo. “Opponents of the new technique argue that all embryos, whether created in the lab or not, have the potential to go on to become a fully-fledged human, and as such it is morally wrong to experiment on them.” In this sense, the human embryo is merely treated as objects or resources rather than a human being by depriving their chance to live. Therefore, it is morally unacceptable to clone a human until all potential issues are fixed. Yet, human cloning can in turn benefits and advances the artificial organ developments.

        Nonetheless, human cloning can boost the artificial organ inventions. Knowing the sophisticated technique enabling us to clone an entire human, we can certainly utilize the therapeutic cloning technique to clone specific parts of the human body, for example, heart, liver and kidney. The Advanced Cell Technology, a company devotes in commercial cloning technology had attempted to clone humans, “They had hoped to use cloned human embryos to extract stem cells, which are embryo cells that can in theory develop into any cell or body tissue and that the company hopes to use to treat diseases.” If successful, patients suffer from fatal diseases such as severe kidney dysfunction and liver failure can replace their malfunction organ with organ cloned with their own cell. This will subsequently lower the chance of transplant rejection. However, human cloning technique is a dilemma, as it could foster the trend of illegal black market organ trade. Dr. Charles Foster, a researcher of University of Oxford said “I expect that there will be a black market [around therapeutic cloning] … if therapeutic cloning were used to produce individuals from whom organs or tissues could be harvested, there would be concerns about instrumentalization: the person would not have been created because she was wanted for herself, but because a particular type of tissue or organ was wanted.” Poor people in third-country may clone and sell their organs in order to free themselves from poverty. Thus, this could consequently lead to the destruction of humanity and the long peace maintained under the civilized world.