Is test tube cloning accepted by our society?

Answer 1

Excellent question. Clinton abolished any scientific research regarding cloning and Bush followed suit. However, parts of Europe are still doing some tests in this area. Members of the UN are gearing up to debate highly the banning of human cloning. The guise is really to hide behind medical research (more organs available such as hearts, kidneys for those who need them) but this is a highly dangerous area to get into. 125 scientific and patient organizations from around the world have signed and presented a letter to the UN. One country of the UN, Costa Rica is backed by nearly 60 countries, including the U.S., for comprehensive banning on cloning. This includes both reproductive cloning to make babies, and the creaton of human embryos for use in medical research. Don't sit back and relax because cloning does go on under secrecy, so who knows what governments are involved. The other group of countries, led by Belgium, and backed by over 20 countries, wants a ban on reproductive cloning only. They argue for the right of stem cells grown from cloned embryos might lead to cures for countless diseases. Span has switched away from supporting a blanket ban because of its change from a conservative to a socialist gov't., after elections in March 2004. Britain funds and supports therapeutic cloning. It may come to a point that each country could quite possibly decide if their country should agree or disagree to cloning. ARGUMENTS USED AGAINST AND IN DEFENSE OF HUMAN CLONING: AGAINST: Cloning might lead to the creation of genetically engineered groups of people for specific purposes, such as warfare or slavery. Cloning might lead to an attempt to improve the human race according to an arbitrary standard. Cloning could result in the introduction of additional defects in the human gene pool. Cloning is unsafe. There are too many unknown factors that could adversely affect the offspring. A close might have a dimished sense of individuality. A clone might have fewer rights than other people. Doctors might use clones as sources of organs for organ transplants Cloning is at odds with the traditional concept of family. Cloning is against God's will. Some aspects of human life should ge off limits to science. IN DEFENSE OF: Cloning would enable infertile couples to have children of their own. Cloning would give couples who are at risk of producing a child with a genetic defect the chance to produce a healthy child. Cloning could shed light on how genes work and lead to the discovery of new treatments for genetic diseases. A ban on cloning may be unconstitutional. It would deprive people of the right to reporduce and restrict the freedom of scientists. A clone would not really bea duplicate, because environmental factors would mold him or her into a unique individual. A clone would have as much of a sense of individuality as do twins. A clone would have the same rights as do all other people. Cloning is comparable in safety to a number of other medical procedures. Objections to cloning are similar to objections raised against previous scientific achievements, for example, heart transplants and test-tube babies, that later came to be widely accepted. As you can see Naruto, this is a complex issue. While many lives could be saved through more heart, liver, kidney transplants by cloning, in the wrong hands, armies could be created, and think of this: What if Hitler or Hussein could be cloned! Humans should be careful what they wish for. The one point that seems to be missing from all of these arguments, on either side of the question, is the acknowledgment that efforts to clone human beings are going to continue, whether under governmental aegis or not. So perhaps the real question should be whether governments should remain engaged in order to control or guide the process, or whether they should simply ban cloning and leave it up to the non-participating governments or even underground laboratories? No we do not need to, we just want to. Cloning technology holds the key to solving a lot of the world's problems that might not otherwise be fixable. If you want a cure in the near future for lots of diseases like Parkinsons, cancer, etc, then yes we really need to study cloning.