The Mystery of Cloning

Cloning

Cloning humans is banned in 23 countries. But scientists and researchers are pushing the technology because they believe that human cloning can bring the future with many benefits. In the United States, 4 states have banned human cloning and the law doesn't allow any government funding for human cloning research. Researchers and scientists by declaring their intentions of human cloning have challenged many nations to ease up on human cloning for biomedical research. On January 22, 2001, Britain became the first to permit researchers to clone human embryos for medical research. Britain's new law allows the researchers up to 14 days to experiment on human cloned embryos for medical research and permission should be granted only when it can be shown there are no other ways of meeting an experiment's objectives. Now that Britain is opening the barriers for human cloning technology, other countries are beginning to follow Britain's footsteps.

Why not clone? The issues of the immorality and unethical nature of cloning has made many people to downsize the technology. Clinton states that," Any discovery that touches upon human creation is not simply a matter of scientific inquiry, it is a matter of morality and spirituality as well. Each human life is unique, born of a mistake that reaches beyond laboratory science." Clinton, for that reason, stopped funding in human cloning research. From many religious philosophies, human cloning is against the will of god and denies the individuality of his or her uniqueness.

Other advocates of human cloning believe that cloning involves risks of abnormalities. Although animal cloning has been known a success, the numbers of animal cloning success has been quite unsuccessful. Many of the animal cloned pregnancies have grown abnormally. There have been 247 abnormal pregnancies out of one successful pregnancy. Most of the pregnancies result in severe abnormalities such as abnormal blood vessels and heart problems. Advocates are relating animal cloning to human cloning thus stating that human cloning can be risky.

Many researchers, however, believe differently from those advocates of human cloning. Most of the researchers believe that human cloning can be extremely beneficial to human kind. They believe that there are many benefits to human cloning that most people don't know about. Cloned human embryos would help research in the fields of genetics and genetically related diseases. Researchers believe that by cloning a diseased or a genetically disorder embryo, it would give researchers the opportunity to experiment with the embryo instead of the individual with the disease or disorder. Experimenting on the embryo stem cell would open new doors on testing. Researching in this field could provide the future with means of