Human Clonning Should Be Banned

HUMAN CLONING SHOULD BE BANNED.

At the present time the science has achieved such high level of the development that it became possible to clone not only the cells but the whole organisms. Up to now such experiments were made on the representatives of the animal kingdom. In the late 90s the whole humanity could make sure of such experiment.

The news that splashed over the newspaper front pages around the world in 1997 was about sheep Dolly. Dolly was the first mammal to have been successfully cloned from an adult cell. Actually she was born on July 5, 1996 but her creators the scientists from Roslin Institute in Scotland didn't announce about her birth until February 22, 1997. Her birth was proclaimed as one of the most significant scientific breakthroughs of the 90s. Moreover, if the sheep Dolly's case was successful so human cloning could be possible.

From the technical point of view there are no problems. But there are some ethical and moral issues that have to be considered in making the decision to ban or not human cloning. Approximately 46 countries have formally banned human cloning. Among them are such countries as Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, Russia, and many others.

I completely agree with these countries. And I have several reasons to think so.

But before advancing the arguments I want to specify that I'm against reproductive cloning but not therapeutic cloning. Nowadays there are a lot of situations when people need organ transplantation for the treatment of some diseases such as cancer, heart disease, etc. In this case therapeutic cloning can be important and necessary. But reproductive cloning is another case. So let's move to my arguments.

The first reason for banning human cloning is the unacceptable medical risks.

The first risk is unimproved cloning technology. Nearly 98% of cloning efforts end in failure. For example, in order to clone the sheep Dolly 277 embryos were needed, from which only one healthy and viable sheep was produced. The other fetuses were hideously deformed and either died or aborted.

The second risk is short term living of the clone. Again take up the Dolly's case. Taking into consideration that sheep can live to 11 or 12 years, Dolly died at the age of 5 years old. And still the cases of long term consequences are not known.

Lastly, the cell taken from adult donor could have accumulated the genetic mutations during its years that could give the resulting clone a predisposition to cancer or other diseases.

The second argument is that human reproductive cloning is not necessary. Supporters of the human cloning can say that reproductive cloning can allow hetero and homosexual couples have children genetically related to them both. It might be better for the welfare of the child to be born into a happy relationship.

But there are another ways to have children, for example, in vitro fertilization and the practice of sperm donation.