Humanelaw

Human cloning is the formation of a hereditarily identical copy of a human, human tissue or human cell.

The moral values of cloning are an extremely contentious issue. Human cloning issue was first addressed by California legislature which banned reproductive cloning. Ever since then Maryland, Indiana, Rhode Island, Michigan, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Iowa, Virginia, North Dakota and South Dakota have enacted actions to forbid reproductive cloning.

There are two types of human cloning: Therapeutic and reproductive cloning. Therapeutic cloning permits scientists to create plentiful source of stem cells for research purposes. In reproductive cloning, the cloned embryo is entrenched in a woman’s uterus, where it potentially results in pregnancy leading to the birth of a cloned human being. Replacement cloning is a third type of cloning involving the combination of both therapeutic and reproductive cloning.

There is an agreement between scientists and legislators that reproductive cloning should be banned. Proponents of therapeutic cloning argue that the method of extracting stem cells from cloned human embryos are important for researching new therapies and mounting cures for severe diseases like Parkinson’s disease, cardiovascular disorder, diabetes, spinal cord damage, Alzheimer’s disease, cancer research and therapy etc. On the other hand, opponents argue that creating cloned human embryos for research purposes treats human existence as a commodity and that destroying embryos in order to extract stem cells is equivalent to murder.

Researchers believe that cloning is advantageous in many spheres such as:

1. Cloning is a new unusual but perhaps efficient treatment for infertility or required by couples who are unable to conceive a child due to genetic disease or other factors.
2. The technology of cloning can also be used to create tissues and organs for transplantation. The cloned tissue or organ would be a genetic match to the recipient thereby eliminating the risk of tissue rejection.                                                                            
3. Cloning technology will be beneficial for the production of endangered and extinct species. 
4. Cloning technology can be used for genetic improvements.                                   
5. Cloning technology may enable to clone a dead person.

Though cloning technology has certain advantages; it contradicts with the human dignity. Dignity can be closely related to self-sufficiency and “human uniqueness” and this uniqueness will be lost in clones due to identical genome. The act of cloning will definitely violate the rights of clone in the future as the person cloned is created for someone else’s benefit.

Cloning degrades human dignity and is unethical as no human being should have their entire genetic makeup predestined by another human being. Cloning degrades family life too as parents will have total control over the genome of their children which will lead to the objectification of children. Parents will start viewing their child as an object and may or may not value their children. The act of cloning can be considered an evil act as every human being has a right to be born in a human approach and not in the laboratory.

In USA, Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2001 has been enacted to control use of cloning technology. World Health Organization considers human cloning as an unethical practice as it contradicts to human dignity and integrity.