Contemporary life is believed to involve both scientific development and destruction of human beings by surrounding people with factories, laboratories, technological breakthroughs, research centers and the decreasing value of the human soul.
The Earth is literally positioned as the foundation and platform for the implementation of all scientific dreams of the writers of the twentieth and early centuries, whose novels were the pure miracle of unattainable heights of science, such as mobile phones, computers and, finally, cloning which firstly appeared in human history bounded with Dolly the Sheep.
Human cloning is brought to the top of disputed issues because of its contradictoriness between the notion of the soul and consciousness and the physical body which has no significance in the worldwide development and evolution. Though, it is important to understand what are the disadvantages of human reproductive cloning and what kind of consequences and obstacles concerning technology, ethics and religion, dignity and people’s opinions on this issue it can face.
Contemporary life is believed to involve both scientific development and destruction of human being by surrounding people with factories, laboratories, technological breakthroughs, research centers and decreasing value of human soul. The Earth is literally positioned as the foundation and platform for the implementation of all scientific dreams of the writers of the twentieth and early centuries, whose novels were the pure miracle of unattainable heights of science, such as mobile phones, computers and, finally, cloning that firstly appeared in human history bounded with the Dolly the Sheep. The human cloning is brought to the top of disputed issues because of its contradictoriness between the notion of the soul and consciousness and the physical body which has no significance in the worldwide development and evolution. Though, it is important to understand what are the disadvantages of human reproductive cloning and what kind of consequences and obstacles concerning technology, ethics and religion, dignity and people’s opinions on this issue it can face.
Firstly, the term ‘cloning’ means the precise reproduction of some object for indefinite number of times. The cloning is considered to be a possibility for creation of human which will reproduce a human donor not only in appearance, but also at the genetic level. Consequently, the main obstacle appears in this sphere: inability to clone and copy the human consciousness and way of thinking because impulses of the brain cannot be read and processed. Not to mention, the consciousness develops in the current environment, so if scientists cloned, for example, Albert Einstein one day, there would be no guarantee that the reproduced clone will somehow become a prominent physicist. Moreover, the animal cloning exists and flourish. The worldwide known Dolly the sheep was the first mammal to clone that has died because of progressive lung disease which reduced Dolly's life in a half. Giles and Knight that work for the The Nature Publishing Group underlined the doubts about survival of clones in the present dangerous time and, in general, the need to create clones, considering the fact that they are under greater threat than the people themselves or the animals (Giles and Knight 2003).
Admittedly, the technology of human cloning brings the woman under attack. The possibility of creating a child by cloning another would make the women nature useless, because the first female’s task is procreation and continuation of the humanity. Though, many feminists would dispute this statement, but no one can call into the question the existence of the genitals and reproductive necessity.
Another important issue is the assumption and the potential risk for all the mankind. By the fact that technology, as it was mentioned earlier, the mechanism of cloning is not perfect, therefore, some defective clones and various mutations may appear. Clone created by scientists will automatically have a life and all human rights immediately. This implies that the clone, and in the future all humanity will be under genetic and scientific threat. Introducing new mechanisms, breaking nature and natural processes of human, people will face ignorance and inaction because affecting anything positively would be too late. Namely, there could be new genetic diseases and mutations that, probably, may reduce the lifetime of people (for example, the case of Dolly the sheep). Fortunately, this is only an assumption, derived from the first official experiment on an animal that was not quite successful.
In addition, ethics and religion are also appeared to be the counterargument, too. In the eyes of Christianity the human being is the creation of God, that should never encroach on the deeds of the Father because the pride is thought to be the one of the deadly sins. Consequently, cloning a human is to create a man as God do. People are not meant to clone themselves due to their mortal nature and pure vulnerability. However, religion allows the scientific research in this field of study, but speaks out against reproductive cloning a human. Another point worth mentioning is a moral aspect. It is common knowledge that the man consists not only of the physical body, but also the soul, moral standards and some individual codes and patterns. In such case, people can feel and behave according to the emotions, people have the mind what is the fundamental difference between human and the animal. What if the cloned human created by the DNA transfer, in contrast, would have only physical appearance without any thoughts and distinctive features of self-sufficient person? (Science Channel 2002) This creature would be akin to an empty glass that will never be filled with liquid or, in this case, the soul. The technology of reproductive cloning recognizes only a physical component, not the spiritual one. The cloning will turn a human into an object that could be controlled only by the technology due to the absence of his own free mind. If to go to this terrifying direction, people would likely to become just a products in the world market that would be created widely and on the large scale. Human cloning would represent a giant step toward begetting into making, procreation into manufacture, a process that was already begun with in vitro fertilization and genetic testing of embryos. With cloning, not only is the process in hand, but the total genetic blueprint of the cloned individual is selected and determined by the human artisans. Is is simply taking a major step into making man, himself, another one of the manmade things. Admittedly, transplantation of organs from cloned human donor whose quality is identical to the genes of the patient is not the desired objectivity. Person’s life, even the life of a cloned human, should not be regarded as a product of consumption. Moreover, the human embryo at the most basic level of development in supposed to have a life. Therefore, it is unethical and immoral to create human life by using the cells and then destroying them. New York Times magazine called into the question,
‘How could a cloned child live out his life freely, knowing he was the recipient of a pre-worn, consciously selected genotype? What sort of narcissism would cloning unleash in us? Would cloning, with its seeming guarantees, gain an edge on sexual reproduction, with all of its unknowns? What would it say about us if we wanted that?’ (Talbot 2001).
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- Quote paper
- Sofia Nudel (Author), 2015, Cloning and the future of persons, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/351961
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