Individuality Vs. the Perfect World

Imagine the world as only beautiful people. Everywhere you look is a Cindy Crawford look-a-like: 5'9", brown hair, brown eyes, and the perfect smile. A "Master Race." Do we really want to reenact Adolf Hitler's plan of seeking world domination killing million upon millions as a "final solution?" Instead of killing, we'd be reproducing millions, going against nature. Say we went and got one of Princess Diana's cells and implanted that in an egg that was then placed into a surrogate mother. Nine months later, we would have a baby Princess Diana. Only trouble is, this baby would only resemble Princess Diana in looks, not personality, character, or individuality. Her whole life wouldn't be what it had been; she wouldn't be "her." What if your newborn son died? Just think; you could have a second chance. Is this morally or ethnically right? Cloning of humans should be forbidden, but cloning of human body parts for medicinal purposes should be allowed.

Cloning hasn't been a big issue or ever thought to have actually been made to work until 1997 with the successful birth of a lamb named Dolly. Out of 277 eggs implanted in different sheep mothers, Dolly was the only lamb successfully born. The method used to clone Dolly was scientists at the Roslin Institute in Scotland took a cell out of the mammary gland. They then used an electrical pulse to coax an adult cell into merging with a host egg whose nucleus had been removed (Hoon). This method being very unsuccessful brought on a new one where scientists used mice, injecting just the adult nucleus into a nucleus free host instead of using an electrical pulse. They also had let it set for two hours before stimulating it to start dividing. The success rate was 2-3 in 100. Now knowing that we could clone sheep and mice, scientists were up to the possibility and challenge of cloning humans. As soon as it became public knowledge that cloning was really happening and becoming more successful, President Clinton imposed a ban on federal funding for human-cloning research. Several states have established restrictions, some even banning cloning completely (Masci 420).

Cloning is not morally or ethnically right. Morally, scientists would be taking the role of God. If a clone dies, where would they go? In religious beliefs, clones would have no souls because God didn't create them. Cloning would alter the definition of ourselves. To clone a dead person with their DNA would only make another person that would look exactly the same minus their personality, character, talents, memories, scars, and life. Can you imagine raising a cloned child? As he/she grew up it wouldn't be the same. They would be thought of as a "special child", that is if they were even born correctly. The odds of even having a human clone born with out defects are very, very slim. The child would go through grade school probably all right until it come time for family life. He/she comes home and it is now your time to explain the "birds and bees" speech. Are you going to explain that he/she is different than all other kids and is a big scientific study or are you going to lie? Either way, you're going to have to live with the consequences. Dolly was cloned from a sheep cell that was about six years old, a middle age for an ewe. So this means that when Dolly was born she was technically six years old. This would mean that she would only be expected to live for five years, which would in truth be shorter than the normal lifespan of eleven years. If this was true, and humans were cloned, their lifespan would be shorter also. This was proved wrong, but if Dolly was born being six years old, she'd be about ten years old right now, and old age. Does this mean that she is only going to live two more years or nine more? Life isn't a toy; it's a very serious thing. You were brought on to this planet for a reason and cloning doesn't seem to be a good enough one.

Cloning would deplete genetic diversity. It is diversity that drives evolution and adaptation (Robinson). Each person is born with a mixture of chromosomes from a mother and father sexually with the egg and fertilization from sperm. The new cell is called a zygote, which then multiplies, creating new cells all with that same DNA (Stonebarge). Cloning would be creating a person non-sexually. The baby would only possess the DNA of one person. As you look around, do you see everyone looking exactly the same? No, and this is variety, except for the few exceptions where about 1/1000 births are identical twins. "Identical twins are each other's clones, they happen because a single cell, for no reason splits and permits to separate embryos to form such a cell called a zygote. Identical twins are, therefore know as monozygotic" (Ebon 95). One of the arguments for human cloning is that it would help science to find out whether heredity or environment has a great influence of individual development. We already have clones, look around: twins! Also, if cloning a human were to occur, no sperm would be need. If cloning became into general usage, there would be no genetic need for men. This shows that all human males could die off (Robinson). "The bottom line is, cloning a person would change the definition of what it means to be a human," said George Annas, a professor of heath laws at Boston University's School of Public Health (Masci 409). George Annas is right. If you want a clone you have a 1/1000 chance with twins, almost more successful than a human clone, and you'll have a lot better chance of having a baby with out defects.

Human cloning is too expensive for general use. If someone were to want a clone, it would far too expensive to even want to risk it, with the chances of it surviving being so low. Nobody's sure right now, but it looks like it could be anywhere from thousands and even millions of dollars to have a clone. I don't think Bill Gates is ready for a clone right now, so we're probably not going to have one right away. There's already a huge gap between the rich and the poor. Would you want to stand out that much? Not only is money a big factor in cloning, there's only ten laboratories in the world that have the technology to clone humans according to Cornell University biologist Bruce Currie (Stoller). Instead of trying to spend our money on research for bringing back loved ones of diseases such as cancer, shouldn't we be spending it on the cure for cancer to help prevent the death in the first place? The world already has a booming population of 6,157,400,560 and a birthrate of 1 every 8 seconds and a death rate of 1 every 14 seconds (World POP). Would we want to add to all of these numbers? If we did actually try cloning humans,