Should Humans Be Cloned?

February 01, 2008

If you’re uneasy about the FDA’s recent decision that meat and milk from cloned animals and their offspring is safe for human consumption, this story is really going to rock your world. Stemagen, a La Jolla, Calif.-based private-sector stem cell research company, has announced that its scientists have for the first time created a human embryo by cloning adult cells through somatic cell nuclear transfer, the same process used to create cloned animals.

You may be thinking that you’ve heard this before, because you have. Back in 2004, South Korean scientists announced that they not only had created a human embryo via cloning but had successfully extracted stem cells from it. After their work could not be replicated, lead scientist Hwang Woo-Suk was forced to admit that the results had been fabricated.

As a result, Stemagen seems to have taken extra care to document its findings, an article accepted by the peer-reviewed scientific journal Stem Cells. The researchers had an independent lab do DNA fingerprinting to prove that the embryos were true clones of the cells from which they originated.

Stemagen chief executive Dr. Samuel H. Wood, who doubled as a donor of the cells from which some of the embryos were cloned, describes the project as “a critical milestone in the development of patient-specific embryonic stem cells for human therapeutic use, potentially including developing treatments for Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and other degenerative diseases.”

But not everybody is going to hail this as a breakthrough. The idea of creating an embryonic clone of a person in order to harvest stem cells — and then discarding the clone — is abhorrent to opponents of most conventional embryonic stem cell research, who consider the destruction of an embryo to be murder. Even those who aren’t outright opposed raise some potentially troubling questions. For example, bioethicist and blogger Arthur Caplan writes:

In the paper announcing the breakthrough, the authors note that they got three out of 25 attempts at clones to turn into human clone embryos. That is a success rate of about 10 percent. Even if that success rate improves in the future, it still means that six or more eggs are going to be required for a researcher to make a stem cell from a clone made from the DNA of one of your own cells.

Where will hundreds of thousands of eggs come from when hundreds of thousands seek cures? Will we pay poor women to create them? Egg-farming, using powerful drugs with serious risks, may not be the most humane way to ask a poor woman to earn a living.

And although this obviously isn’t the Stemagen scientists’ intention, some undoubtedly worry that the process will be used to produce human infants who are perfect genetic duplicates of a cell donor. (It may already have happened, if you buy the 2004 claim of a mysterious outfit named Clonaid that it actually had produced 13 cloned human children; skeptical New York Times journalists pointed out that the company was founded by the leader of a sect that preaches space travelers originally populated Earth through cloning.) If such cloning proved feasible and the process was widely available, would people resort to cloning in an attempt to make themselves (or at least their genetic blueprint) immortal? Or would companies obtain cell samples from the most productive workers and use them to create a generation of super employees who would bump those of us with conventional origins into the unemployment line? Would human clones have the same civil rights as their progenitors? What if terrorists used cloning to create an endless supply of suicide bombers? That all may sound crazy,  but crazy things sometimes happen.

What’s your opinion on human cloning? Say your piece here.

Comments

[Mothra]

It would be intersting to see if they could use the cloning of human cells to help kids with disabilities. For the disabilities that are caused by genetic mutations, it wouldn't help. But for something like cerebral palsy, it might really help someone. On the other hand, as far as using it to make more people, I don't know about that.
It's kinda weird. As far as bettering the human race, I don't know if it will actually do that.

[Right To Lifer]

I agree with President Bush that human cloning is a bad idea. Here's what he had to say in a 2002 speech.

Human cloning is deeply troubling to me, and to most Americans. Life is a creation, not a commodity. (Applause.) Our children are gifts to be loved and protected, not products to be designed and manufactured. Allowing cloning would be taking a significant step toward a society in which human beings are grown for spare body parts, and children are engineered to custom specifications; and that's not acceptable.

In the current debate over human cloning, two terms are being used: reproductive cloning and research cloning. Reproductive cloning involves creating a cloned embryo and implanting it into a woman with the goal of creating a child. Fortunately, nearly every American agrees that this practice should be banned. Research cloning, on the other hand, involves the creation of cloned human embryos which are then destroyed to derive stem cells.

I believe all human cloning is wrong, and both forms of cloning ought to be banned, for the following reasons. First, anything other than a total ban on human cloning would be unethical. Research cloning would contradict the most fundamental principle of medical ethics, that no human life should be exploited or extinguished for the benefit of another. (Applause.)

Yet a law permitting research cloning, while forbidding the birth of a cloned child, would require the destruction of nascent human life. Secondly, anything other than a total ban on human cloning would be virtually impossible to enforce. Cloned human embryos created for research would be widely available in laboratories and embryo farms. Once cloned embryos were available, implantation would take place. Even the tightest regulations and strict policing would not prevent or detect the birth of cloned babies.

Third, the benefits of research cloning are highly speculative. Advocates of research cloning argue that stem cells obtained from cloned embryos would be injected into a genetically identical individual without risk of tissue rejection. But there is evidence, based on animal studies, that cells derived from cloned embryos may indeed be rejected.

Yet even if research cloning were medically effective, every person who wanted to benefit would need an embryonic clone of his or her own, to provide the designer tissues. This would create a massive national market for eggs and egg donors, and exploitation of women's bodies that we cannot and must not allow. (Applause.)

I stand firm in my opposition to human cloning. And at the same time, we will pursue other promising and ethical ways to relieve suffering through biotechnology. This year for the first time, federal dollars will go towards supporting human embryonic stem cell research consistent with the ethical guidelines I announced last August.

[Caffeine Driven Stress Magnet]

Does anybody really care at this point what Bush thinks about anything? Nobody really wants to clone an entire person. This is about growing replacement organs for people who need them. I think it's a great idea.

[Patrick Kiger]

here is a link to an anti-human cloning video by Dr. Patrick Dixon, a physician-turned-futurist who is chairman of Global Change, a corporate consulting firm.
http://www.globalchange.com/noclones.htm

Some of the arguments he makes:

1. Health risks from mutation of genes - an abnormal baby would be a nightmare come true. The technique is extremely risky right now. A particular worry is the possibility that the genetic material used from the adult will continue to age so that the genes in a newborn baby clone could be - say - 30 years old or more on the day of birth. Many attempts at animal cloning produced disfigured monsters with severe abnormalities. So that would mean creating cloned embryos, implanting them and destroying (presumably) those that look imperfect as they grow in the womb. However some abnormalities may not appear till after birth. A cloned cow recently died several weeks after birth with a huge abnormality of blood cell production. Dolly the Sheep died prematurely of severe lung disease in February 2003, and also suffered from arthritis at an unexpectedly early age - probably linked to the cloning process.

Even if a few cloned babies are born apparently normal we will have to wait up to 20 years to be sure they are not going to have problems later -for example growing old too fast. Every time a clone is made it is like throwing the dice and even a string of "healthy" clones being born would not change the likelihood that many clones born in future may have severe medical problems. And of course, that's just the ones born. What about all the disfigured and highly abnormal clones that either spontaneously aborted or were destroyed / terminated by scientists worried about the horrors they might be creating.

2. Emotional risks - a child grows up knowing her mother is her sister, her grandmother is her mother. Her father is her brother-in-law. Every time her mother looks at her she is seeing herself growing up. Unbearable emotional pressures on a teenager trying to establish his or her identity. What happens to a marriage when the "father" sees his wife's clone grow up into the exact replica (by appearance) of the beautiful 18 year old he fell in love with 35 years ago? A sexual relationship would of course be with his wife's twin, no incest involved technically.

Or maybe the child knows it is the twin of a dead brother or sister. What kind of pressures will he or she feel, knowing they were made as a direct replacement for another? It is a human experiment doomed to failure because the child will NOT be identical in every way, despite the hopes of the parents. One huge reason will be that the child will be brought up in a highly abnormal household: one where grief has been diverted into makeing a clone instead of adjusting to loss. The family environment will be totally different than that the other twin experienced. That itself will place great pressures on the emotional development of the child. You will not find a child psychiatrist in the world who could possibly say that there will not be very significant emotional risk to the cloned child as a result of these pressures.

3. Risk of abuse of the technology - what would Hitler have done with cloning technology if available in the 1940s? There are powerful leaders in every generation who will seek to abuse this technology for their own purposes. Going ahead with cloning technology makes this far more likely. You cannot have so-called therapeutic cloning without reproductive cloning because the technique to make cloned babies is the same as to make a cloned embryo to try to make replacement tissues. And at the speed at which biotech is accelerating there will soon be other ways to get such cells - adult stem cell technology. It is rather crude to create a complete embryonic identical twin embryo just to get hold of stem cells to make - say - nervous tissue. Much better to take cells from the adult and trigger them directly to regress to a more primitive form without the ethical issues raised by inserting a full adult set of genes into an unfertilised egg.

[Natural Man]

If you think about cloning from a spiritual perspective, it could create mind-boggling problems for theologians. Would a human clone have a soul, just like a naturally born human? If clones do have souls, are they unique souls, or just spiritual replicas of the people from whom they were created? Would clones be predestined to do good or to sin in the exact same pattern as their precursor humans, or would they have the potential for spiritual advancement? If human scientists create clones, does that mean that the soul doesn't come from God, but is self-created?

[Sasha]

Cloning might have benefits for our society, but it also could cause a lot of problems, not all of which we can foresee. Cloning has the potential to upset the balance of nature. For this reason, i think that cloning experiments must be strictly regulated.

[Ron Paul in 2008]

As a libertarian, I don't think that the government should be able to restrict human cloning for reproductive purposes, because people have a right to do what they want with their own genes. However, once created and implanted in the womb (or nurtured artifically, if that ever becomes possible), a human clone would not be property, but a person who would have the same rights as a conventionally-conceived child. However, that means that creating clone embryos to harvest stem cells and then destroying them should not be permitted. I believe that is a moot point anyway, because we are on the brink of technological advances that will enable us to easily extract some stem cells without destroying an embryo, or else to manipulate adult stem cells so that they can reproduce in an undifferentiated fashion, like embryonic ones.

If you want to read a good well thought out libertarian treatise on this subject, get the book "Liberation Biology" by Ronald Bailey.

[MrAnderson]

Cloning or recreating "LIFE" is a not a bad idea...it's a very bad idea....simple & plain!
Sci-Fi writers have written books about this stuff, comics, movies, tv-shows. Did anyone see the movie "The Island?" Hollywood makes these make believe movies for our entertainment purposes but at the some point you gotta think "how far is this stuff from the actual truth?" Sci-Fi movies tend to be doctored up with the happy endings, but in a real world I doubt cloning humans beings will be anything close to having a happy ending. And you have to remember, these lab nerds(stem cell research scientists) dont really live in a "real world." These guys dont interact everyday with your everyday run of the mill "walking & talking" human beings. Everything to them is lab & research.....who get's the nobel prize...the beauty of science...theory & numbers. They will never take into account that for everything that presented to be good....bad is right there taking notes. And like the sci-fi movies...the scientist ...after all his hard work, get's taken out once the experiment becomes a success.
So I go back to what I said in the beginning: Cloning or recreating LIFE is very bad idea! Stop trying to play God when you're really the devil in disguise.

[MrAnderson]

Cloning or recreating "LIFE" is a not a bad idea...it's a very bad idea....simple & plain!
Sci-Fi writers have written books about this stuff, comics, movies, tv-shows. Did anyone see the movie "The Island?" Hollywood makes these make believe movies for our entertainment purposes but at the some point you gotta think "how far is this stuff from the actual truth?" Sci-Fi movies tend to be doctored up with the happy endings, but in a real world I doubt cloning humans beings will be anything close to having a happy ending. And you have to remember, these lab nerds(stem cell research scientists) dont really live in a "real world." These guys dont interact everyday with your everyday run of the mill "walking & talking" human beings. Everything to them is lab & research.....who get's the nobel prize...the beauty of science...theory & numbers. They will never take into account that for everything that presented to be good....bad is right there taking notes. And like the sci-fi movies...the scientist ...after all his hard work, get's taken out once the experiment becomes a success.
So I go back to what I said in the beginning: Cloning or recreating LIFE is very bad idea! Stop trying to play God when you're really the devil in disguise.

[Lorretta Collins]

An embryo, whether naturally created or created by cloning, is not a person. The use of cloning to create replacement organs or stem cells that would help sick people would be tremendously beneficial. People have the right to do what they want with their own genes, especially if it means saving a life. Would you want to be the one to tell parents that they couldn't use cloning to create a new heart for their ailing child, because it was "unethical?"

[Rush for President, not McCain]

The whole idea of human cloning is incredibly sick, and exactly the sort of thing that most liberals favor. They all want to play God and do away with basic human dignity. The Democratic Senator from Missouri, Claire McCaskill
actually tried to pass a constitutional amendment in her state that would have legalized human cloning.
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/eibessential3/mjf0/mjf/anchorman_2.guest.html

[Derrick Jones, acting media director, National Right to Life Committee]

Thank you for the opportunity to share National Right to Life’s position on cloning. Below, you will find a resolution passed by our Board of Directors in April 2001.

WHEREAS the National Right to Life Committee seeks to protect innocent human life from its earliest beginnings until natural death;

WHEREAS each human life at every stage of biological development is deserving of respect and protection regardless of the circumstances under which that human life was created;

WHEREAS it has been proposed to create human life through cloning for the purpose of destructive experiments on those human beings so created, resulting in their deaths, and for the purpose of scavenging the bodies of those human beings to obtain tissues and organs, resulting in their deaths;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED:

That no human being who is created through cloning should be subject to harmful or lethal experiments or scavenged for tissues or body parts;

That the life of any human being created through cloning should be protected;

That the National Right to Life Committee at this time supports a ban on human cloning and,

That the President and Executive Director are authorized to take whatever action they deem appropriate to implement this resolution.

Passed by the National Right to Life Committee

Board of Directors unanimously, April 28, 2001

[Undecided]

This is from a public opinion poll published in Science Daily
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071219082600.htm

Opinion about therapeutic cloning is evenly divided with 47 percent in favor and 47 percent opposed to using cloning technology for the development of new medical treatments. When cloning is not restricted to therapeutic purposes, about eight in 10, or 81 percent, oppose the use of cloning technology in humans. Opinion on both issues has been fairly stable since the first VCU Life Sciences Survey was conducted in 2001.

[Stay At Home Dad]

If you have yourself cloned and the clone embryo is implanted in a woman and she gives birth, are you then responsible for supporting the clone for the next 18 years? Who is considered to be the clone's parent--the woman who gave birth to it, or the person who had himself (or herself, I suppose) cloned? Do you have responsibility for a clone's behavior, because it is a copy of you, with presumably the same genetic predispositions behaviorally that you do? I believe these issues could result in a real legal mess, unless we make decisions about them beforehand.

[I'm Against Human Cloning!]

I found an article on the BBC News web site about human cloning, and it had this in it:

Q. So, what are the dangers?

A. Experience with the five mammal species that have been cloned so far indicates that there would be almost no chance of success.

The vast majority of pregnancies involving clones have gone very badly. In most of them, the clone has died and in almost all of them the lives of the mother and clone have been put at risk.

In many cases, the clone grows abnormally large, often threatening to tear the womb that can also become swollen with fluid. Almost all clone pregnancies spontaneously abort.

Dolly the sheep, the first mammal clone, was the one success in 247 pregnancies. [B]If a human clone is produced, the cost in human suffering and the trail of failures will be large.[/B]

[I Love Huckabee]

After Pro Life Mike Huckabee becomes president, we won't even need to have this discussion.

[Patrick Kiger]

Well, John McCain is opposed to human cloning also, according to his web site...
http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Issues/95b18512-d5b6-456e-90a2-12028d71df58.htm

Stem cell research offers tremendous hope for those suffering from a variety of deadly diseases - hope for both cures and life-extending treatments. However, the compassion to relieve suffering and to cure deadly disease cannot erode moral and ethical principles.

For this reason, John McCain opposes the intentional creation of human embryos for research purposes. To that end, Senator McCain voted to ban the practice of "fetal farming," making it a federal crime for researchers to use cells or fetal tissue from an embryo created for research purposes. Furthermore, he voted to ban attempts to use or obtain human cells gestated in animals. Finally, John McCain strongly opposes human cloning and voted to ban the practice, and any related experimentation, under federal law.

[Patrick Kiger]

"Fetal farming?" I wonder what the agrobusiness lobby's position is on this. :)

[Barry]

McCain is just pandering to the religious right with that feigned opposition to human cloning, to cover up the fact that he supports embryonic stem cell research and in 1999 said that he opposed the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Plus, remember that the guy is 70-plus years old and looks like he's 80. When those aging organs start to go kerfluey, he's going to be the first one in line at the human cloning lab for replacements!

[William E. Cross 111]

Cloning of HUMANS should be completely legal and,pursued by
every REAL scientist in the world! Do you realize the progress that we; everyone, could learn from, and help HUMANS progress to the next level? Maybe it sounds really sick or trying to play GOD. That is the most inane excuse that I have ever even entertained in my mind! I would clone myself if I had a chance. We can now make perfect people, which leads to UTOPIA! Utopia is still a very long long away, but, why not pursue it! BILLY!

[Hayle McQueen]

i think that people shouldnt be cloned because all people are different and unique

[Rito]

For gaining something, others must be sacrifised

Cloning will bring Fortune or misfortune

For me
Cloning is absolutely good idea, It can clone any of human body part to save other.
Cloning can be used to clone inteligent people that can do further and more advanced research.

And for the bad factor
Cloning will be misfortune for the cloned object ( Human )
Others already talk about this bad factor

[chris]

hey can you please clone me I will pay $9,000,000 contact me

[chris]

hey can you please clone me I will pay $9,000,000 contact me

[chris]

hey can you please clone me I will pay $9,000,000 contact me