Should Human Cloning Ever Be Permitted?

STEM CELL ETHICAL DILEMMA The employment of cloning and human embryonic stem cells is of the most significant innovations in medicine . The discovery of the ability to manipulate embryonic stem cells has created the fields of regenerative medicine and cellular therapy , which aim to treat debilitating and /or fatal conditions that were earlier acknowledged to be incurable Unfortunately , this breakthrough has brought forth issues regarding the value of life . Technically , cloning of embryonic stem cells involve collection of embryos that are ethically regarded at the earliest stages of human life (Brown

, 2006 . Ethical arguments have arisen , questioning whether it is right to improve life by destroying another human life in the form of an embryo . This will describe the technique of therapeutic cloning as well as enumerate ethical arguments that renounce the use of the cloning technology and the use of spare embryos for biomedical research and therapeutics

One major ethical issue regarding the use of spare ' embryos is the lack of respect for the embryo . The concern is associated to the possible future demand for embryos once this cellular technology is determined to be successfully therapeutic . Embryos might later be treated as therapeutic materials or commodities instead of living beings at their initial stages . There is also a risk for a devaluation of embryos , wherein the loss of human life may later in time be tolerated instead of prevented (Bobrow , 2005 . In addition , the acceptance of destruction of embryos may serve as a precedent for implementation of other controversial biomedical acts such as creation of embryo factories , cloned babies and mass production of spare parts ' from fetuses (Hug , 2005 , 2006 . There is claim for the scientific community that employment of spare embryos may not automatically mean any disrespect towards embryos because the destruction of embryos in to collect stem cells results in the provision of new therapeutics for specific medical diss . Certain scientists have actually claimed that it is more immoral to destroy embryos during in vitro fertilization because those embryos are not implanted or donated for further use but are actually discarded , unlike embryos that are destroyed for stem cell research which are cautiously propagated and ultimately designed to replace defective tissues and cells for medical therapeutics . Such rebuttal from the scientific community is not good enough because they actually approach the issue of choosing between the lesser evil option

Another major issue that is being publicly scrutinized is whether the creation of embryos for research purposes is morally worse than using spare ' embryos from IVF cases for experiments . Such issue reflects the intention of each act , and the idea of using leftover embryos from in vitro fertilization protocols is much more tolerable to society than the simple creation of research-oriented embryos because there is less guilt involved in using extra or spare embryos from IVF cases than creating embryos that could have been another human being but their chance to live has been taken away . The scientific community has tried to explain that production and destruction of spare embryos is a normal physiological event during pregnancy , which enables a sibling embryo to complete the entire gestational range . They claim that this kind of sacrifice is also necessary to promote life for the sibling embryo

After describing the pros and cons of two major ethical issues , I personally believe that the utilization of cloning techniques is unacceptable . I think that the ethical questions raised against the technique shows that there is an urgent need to review and prevent the employment of such revolutionary technology , as well as promote the importance of human life and respect . More effort should be given by both scientific and legislative communities to understand and disseminate any human rights that are violated by this technology , so that they would give more respect to life as all the rest of the society has shown over the last centuries

References

Bobrow , J .C (2005 : The ethics and politics of stem cell research Trans . Am . Ophthalmol . Soc . 103 :138-142

Brown T (2006 : Gene cloning and DNA analysis : An introduction . Los Angeles : Blackwell Publishing Limited . 386 pages

Hug , K (2005 : Sources of human embryos for stem cell research Ethical problems and their possible solutions . Medicina (Kaunas 41 (12 :1002-1010

Hug , K (2006 : Therapeutic perspectives of human embryonic stem cell research versus the moral status of a human embryo- Does one have to be compromised for the other ? Medicina (Kaunas ) 42 (2 :107-114

Snow H (2003 : Stem Cell Research : New Frontiers in Science and Ethics University of Notre Dame Press , Notre Dame . PAGE 3 ...