(rubs hand together) Alrighty! Here’s a complicated issue for you to chew on.
Should human cloning be legalised?
First of all, however, what does that mean?
This is from wikipedia:
Cloning is the process of producing individuals with identical or virtually identical DNA, either naturally or artificially. In nature, many organisms produce clones through asexual reproduction. Cloning in biotechnology refers to the process of creating clones of organisms or copies of cells or DNA fragments (molecular cloning).
This is from Cloning humans? Biological, ethical, and social considerations | PNAS:
Can a human individual be cloned? The correct answer is, strictly speaking, no. What is cloned are the genes, not the individual; the genotype, not the phenotype. The technical obstacles are immense even for cloning a human’s genotype.
Also from that site is this, which is a lengthy read but explains why human cloning would be essential in medical discoveries and improving the livelihoods of patients:
Lengthy but informative read
Cloning of embryonic cells (stem cells) could have important health applications in organ transplantation, treating injured nerve cells, and otherwise. In addition to SCNT, the method discussed above for cloning individuals, another technique is available, induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), although SCNT has proven to be much more effective and less costly. The objective is to obtain pluripotent stem cells that have the potential to differentiate in any of the three germ layers characteristic of humans and other animals: endoderm (lungs and interior lining of stomach and gastrointestinal tract), ectoderm (nervous systems and epidermal tissues), and mesoderm (muscle, blood, bone, and urogenital tissues). Stem cells, with more limited possibilities than pluripotent cells, can also be used for specific therapeutic purposes (45).
Stem cell therapy consists of cloning embryonic cells to obtain pluripotent or other stem cells that can be used in regenerative medicine, to treat or prevent all sorts of diseases, and for the transplantation of organs. At present, bone marrow transplantation is a widely used form of stem cell therapy; stem blood cells are used in the treatment of sickle cell anemia, a lethal disease when untreated, which is very common in places where malaria is rife because heterozygous individuals are protected against infection by Plasmodium falciparum , the agent of malignant malaria. One of the most promising applications of therapeutic cloning is the growth of organs for transplantation, using stem cells that have the genome of the organ recipient. Two major hurdles would be overcome. One is the possibility of immune rejection; the other is the availability of organs from suitable donors. Another regenerative medical application that might be anticipated is the therapeutic growth of nerve cells. There are hundreds of thousands of individuals throughout the world paralyzed from the neck down and confined for life to a wheelchair as a consequence of damage to the spinal cord below the neck, often as a consequence of a car accident or a fall, that interrupts the transmission of nerve activity from the brain to the rest of the body and vice versa. A small growth of nerve cells sufficient to heal the wound in the spinal cord would have enormous health consequences for the wounded persons and for society.
At present, the one gene therapy modification of the embryo that can be practiced is mitochondrial replacement (MR), legalized in the United Kingdom by the House of Commons on February 3, 2014 (43), as mentioned earlier. Mutations in the mitochondrial DNA of about 1 in 6,500 individuals account for a variety of severe and often fatal conditions, including blindness, muscular weakness, and heart failure (46). With MR, the embryo possesses nuclear DNA from the mother and father, as well as mtDNA from a donor female who has healthy mtDNA. However, MR remains technically challenging, with a low rate of success. One complicating issue is that mtDNA replacement is not 100% successful; disease-causing mutant mtDNA persists in the developing embryo and may account for eventual diseases due to heteroplasmy, at least in some tissues. A second issue of concern is that mtDNA disorders often appear late in life. It remains unknown whether the benefits of MR as currently practiced may persist in advanced age.
Now, human cloning could mean cloning stem cells or organs, which would hugely further medical science and help with transplants of all kinds. The other kind would be reproductive options for infertile, gay or asexual couples. Both options don’t sound so bad, do they?
ARGUMENTS AGAINST (REPRODUCTIVE) HUMAN CLONING
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Reproductive cloning would foster an understanding of children, and of people in general, as objects that can be designed and manufactured to possess specific characteristics.
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Reproductive cloning would diminish the sense of uniqueness of an individual. It would violate deeply and widely held convictions concerning human individuality and freedom, and could lead to a devaluation of clones in comparison with non-clones.
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Cloned children would unavoidably be raised “in the shadow” of their nuclear donor, in a way that would strongly tend to constrain individual psychological and social development.
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Reproductive cloning is inherently unsafe. At least 95% of mammalian cloning experiments have resulted in failures in the form of miscarriages, stillbirths, and life-threatening anomalies; some experts believe no clones are fully healthy. The technique could not be developed in humans without putting the physical safety of the clones and the women who bear them at grave risk.
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If reproductive cloning is permitted to happen and becomes accepted, it is difficult to see how any other dangerous applications of genetic engineering technology could be proscribed.
ARGUMENTS FOR (REPRODUCTIVE) HUMAN CLONING
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Reproductive cloning can provide genetically related children for people who cannot be helped by other fertility treatments (i.e., who do not produce eggs or sperm).
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Reproductive cloning would allow (cis) lesbians to have a child without having to use donor sperm, and (cis) gay men to have a child that does not have genes derived from an egg donor (though, of course, a surrogate would have to carry the pregnancy).
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Reproductive cloning could allow parents of a child who has died to seek redress for their loss.
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Cloning is a reproductive right, and should be allowed once it is judged to be no less safe than natural reproduction.
- What are your thoughts on this?
- Should reproductive human cloning be legalised and developed?
- Should therapeutic (medical for organs and the like) human cloning be legalised and developed?
- Would you ever take part in either of these?
Personally, I am asexual, so the reproductive side sounds appealing, but only if it’s pot luck, like with normal reproduction. I want to part in eugenics or anything like that. People trying to participate in such things should be criminalised, because it’s just morally wrong.
The therapeutic side of this I believe is something we should be vying for. People wait years to get transplants, and often the transplant is rejected despite their best efforts, causing trauma and devastation. Human cloning in a medical sense could be the next step for medicine, after all.
