Topic > Morals and Ethics of Cloning - 1134

Morals and Ethics of CloningCloning is the process of taking cells from a donor, placing them in a culture dish where nutrients are minimal, so that the cells stop dividing and exchange their "active genes". The cells are then placed next to an unfertilized egg. The nucleus is sucked out of the egg leaving an empty egg cell containing all the cellular machinery necessary to produce an embryo. an electric shock is then used to fuse the egg and cell together is successfully passed to the embryo stage, it is then inserted into the uterus of a surrogate mother. At birth, all the genes are the same as the donor cell. 1997 Dr. Ian Wilmut, a British scientist, successfully cloned a sheep named Dolly. This turned the scientific world upside down. The success of the experiment is widely considered an extraordinary achievement in science. However, ethics and morals must emerge to regulate cloning. It is understood that individuality is the most important part of life. Individuality is given to a person at birth and is considered a right that he or she will have for the rest of his or her life. There is also a fear that the clone may be produced only to live the life of the clone, thus causing severe emotional damage as well as pain and suffering for the clone. The progression of the clone may be limited, the progress of developing the idea will slowly die out. Evolution may stop because with clones diversity will be limited and there will not be much progress in society. The cells, in all human beings, will all be the same and there will not be a process of natural selection and diversity. Another controversial issue facing the cloning process is: how will the clones be treated? The emotions of the clones must be taken into consideration, after all they are human too. “What these different views have in common, however, is the shared understanding that being a 'person' is different from being an 'object' manipulated by the desires and expectations of other people” (Biomedical Ethics). People, like clones, will be studied, prodded and poked, which in turn will cause a lot of unwanted anxiety and emotional distress. There will also be problems with the relationships between the parents and the clone for understandable reasons.