Cloning of Human Beings by Leon R. Kass

NAME

The Issue of Human Cloning

INTRODUCTION

Human cloning has been a favorite subject in science fiction stories but has in recent years , it has become front page news . Anytime that a new scientific debate is born , many details about the itself is muddled with many inaccuracies . The problem is : do people understand enough of the science to predict whether cloning will be acceptable or not ethically and /or legally ? Does it make sense to bring new people in the world whose origin is drastically different than the majority of

people ? This short review will focus first on arguments for cloning human beings based on scientific arguments and second on arguments against human cloning from the book by Leon Kass The Ethics of Human Cloning

REPRODUCTIVE AND RESEARCH CLONING

Cloning is done in adult animals by somatic cell nuclear transfer . In the case of sheep like Dolly , the nucleus of a cell from a sheep is placed inside the cell of another sheep that has been emptied from its nucleus . However , contrary to the popular belief , the cloned sheep will not be 100 genetically identical to the donor sheep . The enucleated cell still has some DNA inside in organelles like the mitochondria that will be different than the donor 's DNA

The main arguments for cloning deal with the potential medical as well as scientific benefits that would be conferred upon humanity if adult humans could be cloned . The first reason is that cloning humans would bring forth medical breakthroughs for curing diseases like cancer . The rationale is that cloning involved in the differentiation of a cell may be an advantage that could help in the comprehension of how a cell differentiates and divides . Cancerous cells are multiplying without restraints since the cellular mechanisms for regulating cell division and cell growth are non-functional . Usually , unrestrained division and growth in normal cells do not continue because the cell has safety mechanisms that will induce death or apoptosis to stop this uncontrollable process . Other ideas about the benefit of cloning are cloning organs that could replace defective ones like heart , kidneys and liver . This type of cloning is called research cloning contrasting with reproductive cloning

Another argument deals with infertility and reproduction . Many people cannot have children . Reproductive cloning would not only give them a child , but an ideal child in terms of genomic inheritance , implying that a clone could have its genome altered based on the parent 's disease history . This would guarantee a healthy child or some kind of twin to the parent . In essence , identical twins are clones of each other since their genome is identical . Cloning also happens all the time in nature So , why not in humans too whenever it is wanted

ARGUMENTS AGAINST CLONING

Leon Kass in his book The Ethics of Human Cloning ' analyzes the reasons why human cloning should never be used in our society

Dr . Kass expresses a fundamental distrust of human cloning based on the fact that human intervention is involved...