Part 3. Issues relating to cloning

Advocates of human therapeutic cloning believe the practice could provide genetically identical cells for regenerative medicine, and tissues and organs for transplantation. Such cells, tissues and organs would neither trigger an immune response nor require the use of Immunosuppressive drugs.[22] Both basic research and therapeutic development for serious diseases such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes, as well as improvements in burn treatment and reconstructive and cosmetic surgery, are areas that might benefit from such new technology.[23] Trying to find compatible donors is difficult and can take a long time, but with therapeutic cloning, the speed of this process would increase and compatibility would not be an issue.

Proponents claim that human reproductive cloning would also produce benefits. Severino Antinori and Panayiotis Zavos hope to create a fertility treatment that allows parents who are both infertile to have children with at least some of their DNA in their offspring.[24] Some scientists, including Dr. Richard Seed, suggest that human cloning might obviate the human aging process.[25] Dr. Preston Estep has suggested the terms "replacement cloning" to describe the generation of a clone of a previously living person, and "persistence cloning" to describe the production of a cloned body for the purpose of obviating aging, although he maintains that such procedures currently should be considered science fiction and current cloning techniques risk producing a prematurely aged child.[23]

In Aubrey de Grey's proposed SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence), one of the considered options to repair the cell depletion related to cellular senescence is to grow replacement tissues from stem cells harvested from a cloned embryo.

Human cloning also raises implications of a socio-ethical nature, particularly concerning the role that cloning might play in changing the shape of family structure by complicating the role of parenting within a family of convoluted kinship relations. For example, a female DNA donor would be the clone's genetic twin, rather than mother, complicating the genetic and social relationships between mother and child as well as the relationships between other family members and the clone.[25]

The high expectations that could be placed on cloned individuals raises questions pertaining the ethics of human cloning and whether these issues are morally problematic as well. Expectations that the cloned individuals act identically to the human they were cloned could greatly infringe on the right to self-determination. This term means that all humans should have the right to decide who and what they want to be to some extent. The cloned children would be violated in knowing that they were genetically induced to act a certain way. The cloned children may also feel that they are expected to live a life that was predetermined.

There are also some additional issues relating to cloning:

• Ethical issues are those that ask us to consider the potential moral outcomes of cloning technologies.

• Legal issues require researchers and the public to help policymakers decide whether and how cloning technologies should be regulated by the government.

• Social issues involve the impact of cloning technologies on society as a whole.

Some questions to ponder.

The questions raised here have no clear right or wrong answer. Instead, your response will depend on your own set of values, as well as the opinions of those around you.

Who has the right to have children, no matter how they are created? Who doesn't? Why?

Is human cloning "playing with nature?" If so, how does that compare with other reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilization or hormone treatments?

Does cloning to create stem cells, also called therapeutic cloning, justify destroying a human embryo? Why, or why not?

If a clone originates from an existing person, who is the parent?

What are some of the social challenges a cloned child might face?

Do the benefits of human cloning outweigh the costs of human dignity?

Should cloning research be regulated? How, and by whom?