Pros on Human Cloning
With human cloning just don't think about having a duplicate, think about how it can help save a persons life, cure diseases, cure cancer and other incurable diseases, but it is not all about curing diseases it can also help with childless couples.
Dr. Richard Seed, one of the leading proponents of human cloning technology, stated “that it may someday it may be possible to reverse the aging process.”
“Scientists believe that they may be able to treat heart attack victims by cloning their healthy heart cells and injecting them into the areas of the heart that have been damaged." Since heart attacks causes the most death in America
Also with cloning humans, you can create a baby for a family that has lost there child, it can also be helpful for couples that can not have a baby because of personal reasons and with cloning these couples will be able to have a happy life with there new cloned baby.
Stem cell research is another part of cloning that can help people with there disability, it could be anything from a disability to where you can't walk to where you can't even feed yourself. People that are stuck in wheel chairs, such as Stephen Hawking, with stem cell research we can put him on his feet and like Christopher Reeve was trying to do with spinal cord injuries.
"Embryonic stem cells are formed from a one-cell DNA clone of the human who needs treatment. The cell is allowed to divide about six times and then the stem cells are harvested."
People talk about they would clone themselves to be able to take an organ or an arm from the clone, but if a clone were to be born it would have all the rights of a normal human would have. "The U. S. Constitution strongly implies that once a human fetus is outside the womb and alive, he has rights. Decisions backing this up give him rights to inherit property, rights not to suffer discrimination because of disability, and rights to U. S. citizenship."
With this information i believe that we should put more effort in helping fund cloning, because in the future we are going to need all the help we can get for the new illnesses that will be arriving.
Cons on Human Cloning
Firstly, there are countless errors before the "perfect" clone could ever be created. When Dolly was created, it was one out of 227 trials, so for one Dolly, tens of hundreds of lambs with abnormalities were produced. This, obviously, is not only a waste of time and money, but also innocent lives of animals and possibly humans.
Opponents also argue that psychological harms could fall upon children. They could suffer from a reduced sense of individuality, and a cloned child may feel that their future is worth less as it now rests in a cloned individual. Also critics argue that "cloning encourages parents to value how well children can genetically meet their expectations rather than loving them for being just their children."
Also with cloning humans, parents and society may now see their children as objects and not as human beings with actual feelings. It is also seen that if human cloning becomes a reality and a regular social practice, parents who want to "play the lottery" and not genetically choose their child may be cast out of society.
Another thing to think about is the possibility of physical harm to the human embryo. Scientists say that technology is not safe enough to use on humans. Some people are also afraid that clones may age quicker since the cell used in the cloning procedure has already been used in a real life individual. The clone has a much shorter life expectancy than any other human because of added years.
There are many risks involved in creating a clone including risks to the ovum donor, a nucleus donor, and a woman who may receive the embryo for implantations; along with the risks of the clone in this experimental procedure.
It is also argued that we should not use scarce resources in order to concentrate on cloning when there are more pressing issues such as curing diseases. Cloning is very expensive and highly inefficient. More than 90% of cloning attempts fail to produce viable offspring. Even if cloning's genetic mutation and reliability problems can be overcome, it will still be too expensive to use on an individual patient basis.
In addition to low success rates, cloned humans and animals tend to have more compromised immune function and higher rates of infection, tumor growth, and other disorders.
Cloning may also have very serious health risks. If a child was a clone, he or she might grow up lacking a sense of individuality and acceptance among peers. It could also destroy uniqueness and cause over-population. Many problems can occur, as everyone will share the same genetic material. Then maybe, our ability to clone will be lost and when we resort to natural reproduction, we may face another problem: inbreeding. This brings back the subject of more diseases, more abnormalities and finally, death. A clone can never be an exact copy of a person. They would, at most, only look like the person you are trying to recreate. Again, we can ask ourselves, where do we draw the line?
It is also a horrific idea to "bring back" animals and people who have passed away. Many feel that we are "playing God" by fighting nature
