Human Awareness Essay On Cloning Essay, Research Paper
Human Awareness Essay on Cloning
There are many controversial topics around the world today, and some of them include such topics as abortion, drugs, the death penalty, alcohol, guns, and now even cloning. Surrounding these issues we can find differing opinions, and positions in how people feel about such topics in our community. Many of these arguments, can be narrowed down to two different views, there are those who put forward their own individual point of view and those who put forward what they think is best for the community. An individualistic viewpoint stresses the rights of the individual as a unique being, and shows what they believe and feel bout certain things. A communitarian viewpoint is more concerned with the good for the greatest number.
The discovery of cloning can be both beneficial and harmful to society. There are many reasonable methods of cloning, and offcourse many different opinions on what we should use this technology for and who should have the authority to use cloning towards society s benefit. Cloning is done by taking the genetic information from a person so that a clone may be made and placing the genetic information into an egg which has had the nucleus removed. This now becomes a zygote, which is then placed in a uterus of a woman, and the zygote will became a clone of the person.
What I am trying to put forward or pose as a question is should cloning become a world wide act preformed in all doctors surgeries or should it be controlled and watched very closely by government or other authorities and used under tight restrictions.
While the potential benefits of genetic engineering are considerable, so may be the potential dangers. For instance, the use of cloning for medical purposes can be helpful by creating new body parts or organs, due to the shortage of donors, this could become a valuable asset. Cloning body parts can also be harmful if it gets into the wrong hands. So should cloning be controlled by the government to the extent that there is no possible way it will be misused.
Now with the cloning of mammals possible, the question is changed from weather or not we could clone humans, but weather or not we should. Firstly I would like to say that I strongly disagree with the use of cloning for the purpose of parents choosing their child. By simply producing characteristics to the parents needs society would be pointless. Everyone in the world would be walking around looking like famous starts like Marilyn Monroe and everyone would be made to look beautiful. I cant imagine too many parents choosing their child to look ugly. Society would be dull and boring because everyone would be the same.
Cloning will certainly expand the scope of medicine greatly, thus enhance the possibilities of conquering diseases such as AID S, cancer and other diseases that were earlier considered incurable.
Cloning could be used to increase the population of endangered species of animals and thus save them from total extinction. This would help maintain a natural balance on the earth and have a continuos natural life cycle.
The most prominent collective opposition to cloning was from the religious community. Many said, “who has the right to play God by creating life, and what are the moral obligations of the creator?” When Pope John Paul II was asked on the issue of cloning he said “the creation of human life outside marriage goes against God’s plan, a person has the right to be born in a human way and not in the laboratory.”
All of these are positives and negatives relating to cloning but the question I want to ask is should cloning be controlled by the government or not? Although cloning has been studied for a large number of years it is still a fairly new technology to us with the first animal being cloned only four years ago. Because this is new to our society many people feel that it may be used to our disadvantage or other peoples advantage over them. This raises the question of who should cloning be controlled by?
Personally I think that cloning should for a fair while be control by the government until we have got the cloning procedure up to scratch and is safe and reliable. Once it has been brought about to a acceptable method (i.e. no high risks involved in taking the procedure) it should be available in all hospitals and available to those who need it for medical help. I don t think cloning should be used just to make an exact copy of your self or someone else nor should it be used in child birth because I think altering your child to look like someone else is wrong and shouldn t be allowed. If everyone did start making clones of themselves we would have a huge population problem. Currently there are 7.5 billion people living on earth. Judging by the current growth rate, it is estimated that the population will double in 20 years. So as you can see by cloning we will have millions of extra people on top of the worlds population.
The overall discovery of cloning is interesting and great step but, as it is a relatively new topic it has many unanswered questions. There are things that need to be sorted out such as, Who can use cloning? and How it will be controlled? It would be terrible to think that the wrong people would abuse such a discovery. So I think it should be controlled by the government or government authorities. This should not be something that is widely practiced or at least not in this early stage.
I think the new breakthrough is very interesting and has many unanswered questions. There are many things that need to be sorted out such as who can use cloning and how it will be controlled so it does not cause problems. It would be terrible to see such a great breakthrough be abused by the wrong people.