I'm no expert on this subject and the thought of cloning humans scares the bejesus out of me. Could this lead to a new future race of souless freaks? What is the good that can come from this? Obviously the medical ramifications but are we to raise these cloned beings only to harvest their organs? Like I said, I don't know too much on the subject so I thought I'd get some opinions. Against.....(till more info is available).
Totally against. Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart. Jeremiah 1:5 Being a Christian, I believe cloning opposes God's intent of life.
I think many of the objections (but not all) come from many who oppose abortion on the grounds that sub-fetuses are alive at the moment of inception. They feel, therefore that such research is akin to murdering people for their parts. Given the intractable people of most people on this position I won't comment one way or the other, but I think that it is important to realize that this is a major sub-plot in the debate. If you agree with their suppositions on abortion, I think that their positions are very powerfull. Of course, if you dont, their arguements are irrelevant. The other issue is the reappearing luddite concern that 'man should not play god'. This arguement comes up every time mankind expands the amazing things that we can do using technology to make our lives better. I would say if you give weight to this arguement, it logicaly ends with you joining the Christian Scientists and refusing any sort of medical treatment whatsoever, which is fine if that's your thing. Otherwise, going half-way just because it upsets your current sensabilities seems a bit hipocritical. The final arguement is that, while as a whole most people will use the technology for good uses, there's always one whacko out there who'll do evil things. This arguement has been lent creedance since the advent of the nuclear age, and mankind has been able to destroy itself in one instance. This would seem to be the greatest arguement that man should colonise other planets for redundancy. I would say, however, that on the same nuclear technology which caused the cold war, has on the whole caused much more good in the form of new technologies and possibilities. I would also say that the same microbological technology which has caused so much distress with the recent Anthrax attacks has caused more good than evil in the form of things like new drugs and vaccacines. I think that this, for the most part, is true for all technological innovations. Things like gunpowder, the printing press, combustion engines, and electricity have all at various moments caused bursts of intense evil. On the whole, however, the good they've brought to the world far eclipse these things. I'll assume that the same holds true for cloning/stem-cell research. (BTW, the idea is that you could grow organs without growing bodies from which to harvest them.)
"For man in his natural state, is the WORK OF GOD, but as we now see, we may be said properly enough, to be the work of man..."
You know..... I'm against it for spiritual reasons. But, then again my spirituality is not supposed to be a concern of our government (except to protect my right). I believe that God knows what humans are capable of and, that we are not near our limits yet. But, I will never (I don't think) agree with cloning, nor will I support it. Not in the "create a whole human being" version of it anyways. So, I say, "Mankind, do it, if that's what you feel must be done. See what happens." Maybe the first clone to reach adulthood will be the anti-Christ. Maybe they'll all be perfect. Maybe there won't be a difference. Maybe they'll all go to Hell. Maybe they'll all go to Heaven. Maybe they won't have souls. Maybe....
We already have 6 billion people on this planet, we don't need more. I am for cloning humans for medical purposes, however. I am completely for all stemcell, and embryo research. I am absolutely FOR cloning endangered species. Since humans have wiped out so many species, it seems only fair that they could use science to bring some of them back. Why has no one talked about this possibility? The panda, the orangutan, the koala etc... Why not?
I'm all for cloning. Just imagine all of the crazy stuff that would come out of it. Would clones have to wear a C on their clothes? Would politicans try to deny clones citizenship? Would religious groups go around persecuting clones? Clone civil rights? Who would be the first clone elected president? The first clone on the moon? Maybe one day when a couple wants to have a kid they'd just go into the neighborhood Genes R Us and pick out the "options" for their child. The deluxe option includes 20-10 vision, 6'5" height, blue eyes, and curly blond hair.
For - I don't see a moral difference in cloning or taking drugs to make you fertile. I saw on TV the other day that the septuplets turned 2. They must have used the term miracle 10 times in that piece, but why is it a miracle and this evil? Is that not a case of "man playing God"? If God wanted them to have a child, why would he make it impossible for them? What about a pace-maker, is that not "playing God"? If your heart gives out, I think thats a pretty convincing sign from God that it's time to go. Who decides where these lines are drawn? I have a pretty simple solution, if you don't want to be cloned, don't be. If, when your waiting for that liver transplant they offer a cloned one, don't take it. Wait a minute, what are you doing getting a transplant anyway, thats not the liver God intended you to have! Otherwise he would have given it to you in the first place.
The problem I have with cloning is best described by a line from Jurassic Park: "Your scientists were so busy trying to find out if they could, they didn't stop to think if they should." It goes beyond the simple issue of population or even ethics. We simply have no idea what introducing this type of genetic engineering (even if you are just trying to produce a "copy") will do to the world. GMO plants have already created serious problems because while they solve one problem (insects attacking them, for example), they create another. Some GMO plants are having the effect of killing off the monarch butterfly because it's catepillars are being inadvertantly destroyed by GMO foods. It is impossible for us to know the future but it gets even cloudier when we start introducing unstable and unnatural elements into our ecosystem.
Nobody had any idea what would happen when they detonated the first nuclear weapon. Some of the scientists were of the opinion that an unstopable nuclear reaction would commense which would consume the entire earth. People in the 50's and 60's predicted that developing computers would lead to the world being taken over by robots. George Orwell wrote 1984 as a reaction to the sins of technology, as did Aldous Huxley with Brave New World. What do all of these have in common? They were all wrong. You can either choose to embrase the unknown of innovation or shrike away in fear from what could happen. You can either stand still and fade away or keep moving. The history of technology is a history of evil aftereffects and uses -- tempered and offset by the greater and overwhelming benefits. Point out to me one example where exploration of new technology has resulted in a greater net loss than gain for humanity. Innovation and adaptation is the only thing that has prevented us from becomming lunch from the lions on the plains. Keep the species moving along, or get out of my way as I crack open the eggs for my omelette. The only arguement that can survive any scrutiny is an ethical one. Otherwise don't waste your breath.
One of the reasons that the reduction of the populations to negligable proportions in these species is a problem is the lack of genetic diversity. You end up, in effect, with a giant species-wide state of Arkansas, where everyone is everyone elses cousin, brother, uncle, and father. Cloning does nothing for this problem. It simply creates a 'feel good' enviroment where we are maintaining a species in the labratory simply for the sake of keeping them around. It is the equal of life support for a terminaly ill patient. It only satisfies irrational emotional needs, not any genuine purpose.
"You were so busy trying to see if you could, that you didn't stop to think if you should." Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park Costanza: "You can't stop science...can't be stopped...no stopping science." Elaine: "George, shut up!" i'm not for cloning...you guys know my reasons, i think.
This is one of the many reasons humans shouldn't be cloned......not even considering the numerous ethical or theological reasons. http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991679 Cloned monkey embryos are a "gallery of horrors" 19:00 12 December 01 Sylvia Pagán Westphal, Boston A high percentage of cloned monkey embryos that look healthy are really a "gallery of horrors" deep within, says a researcher at Advanced Cell Technology, the company that last month published the first paper on cloned human embryos. This could mean that there is something unique about primate eggs that will make cloning monkeys or people far more difficult than cloning other animals. At the very least, the experiments show that there's a lot to learn before primates can be cloned. Tanja Dominko, who presented the results last week at a conference in Washington DC, did the work before joining ACT, while she was working for the reproductive biologist Gerald Schatten at the Oregon Regional Primate Research Center in Beaverton. Several groups have been trying for years to clone monkeys, but while the embryos look normal, no one has ever got them to develop further. To try and figure out what was going wrong, Dominko looked at 265 cloned rhesus macaque embryos created by nuclear transfer - plucking out an egg's nucleus and then adding a nucleus from a donor cell. She followed development of the embryos through several divisions, from the two-cell stage until the 32-cell stage. Though they appeared superficially healthy, the cells in the vast majority of Dominko's embryos did not form distinct nuclei containing all the chromosomes. Instead, the chromosomes were scattered unevenly throughout the cells. "The surprising thing is that these cells keep dividing," says Dominko. Some embryos developed to the stage known as a blastocyst, but by day six or seven they had started to look abnormal. The cloned human embryos created by ACT didn't even get this far. Only one reached the six-cell stage. Dominko says that the trauma of removing the nucleus from the egg might be what triggers the defects. Eggs whose nuclei are removed and then put back inside show the same abnormalities, as well as evidence of programmed cell suicide. "This is not to say that normal embryos can't be made, but not on a regular basis," says Dominko. Ian Wilmut, who cloned Dolly the sheep, told the conference that Dominko's results were not surprising in the light of experience of nuclear transfer in mice and cows. Even in these animals the success rates are not high, so the phenomena observed by Dominko probably occur in them as well - it's just that everyone focuses on the few successes, he says. Even so, researchers hoping to publish work on nuclear transfer in humans may now have to come up with better evidence that embryos are healthy. William Haseltine, editor of the journal in which ACT published details of its cloned human embryos, now agrees that pictures alone aren't enough.
Actually, the main thrust of stem cell research has nothing to do with cloning organs, body parts, etc. The idea is to learn how to direct the stem cells to differentiate a certain way; once you can do this you can make all sorts of "wonder drugs". For example, say you're dying of pancreatic cancer; a "wonder drug" is injected or taken orally which simultaneously destroys the cancerous cells and builds new, healthy ones to replace the dead cells, and voila! You've got a new, healthy pancreas without the need for growing a new one and surgically replacing the dying one. Among other things, this will likely mean a cure for cancer. It might also lead to medicines that will allow us to halt (keep those pesky telomeres from falling off) or even reverse the aging process. The medical possibilities are nearly limitless... As for actual human cloning, most respectable scientists agree that it's both unethical and totally unnecessary. But even if it is totally outlawed in the US, Western Europe, etc, it's pretty much a certainty that it will occur in countries like China and Russia... Down the road, however, advances in neuroscience could bring up the possibility of transferal of consciousness, which in combination with human cloning technology could hold the promise of immortality. If possible, such developments could raise all sorts of ethical, philosophical, and theological questions... But that's probably quite a ways off.
Great arguements for both sides. I recently saw a '60 Minutes' or 'Dateline' episode where a kid from Atlanta had sickle cell and his doctor introduced stem cells into his bloodstream and cured him. In fact it changed his blood type. This type of research obviously has tremendous promise. But cloning humans or animals doesn't seem right to me. I mean can we clone a soul to go along with the body? I guess we'll know sooner or later. Someone's going to do it just to do it.
