Technological advancement has undeniably revolutionized the world to an extent that it has become possible to produce genetically identical animals through asexual replication processes known as cloning (Rhind, 2003). Recently, there have been efforts to clone humans, but this has raised ethical concerns among many scholars, policy makers, and religious groups. One such scholars is, Steve Stice, a director at the University of Georgia who notes the idea of cloning human is unethical as well as it is of no value to clone people. However, Thomas Harkin, the former Iowa Senator, believes that the idea of cloning humans should have even much earlier because it doesn’t limit the knowledge in humans. Cloning of human has remains to a controversial issue that has raised many unethical concerns among different groups of people.
Cloning of humans is undeniably a controversial topic because it raises many reasons from different perspectives such as ethics, religion, science, and human dignity (Hernandez, 2016). Science itself has established that the success rate of cloning in animals is 3%, and thus cloning humans is considerably a daunting task that would register minute success rates. Myers (2016) argues that cloning of humans can involve several stillbirths, miscarriages, and failures, and this would be a huge impediment to the success of cloning in humans. He goes ahead to postulate that the global economy could be affected detrimentally due to the huge capital outlays that are needed to conduct cloning experiments, in addition to, causing overpopulation and lack of diversity in the world.
Saad (2002), however, suggests that cloning of humans is a controversial issues since it contradicts the beliefs of spiritual religious groups that recognize a deity as the sole provider of life. He goes further to state that despite being unnatural, cloning could be used for evil reasons such as causing destruction to the world. It is however, undeniable that cloning can be beneficial in helping to cure biological problems such as infertility as well as tackling the problem of terminal diseases. Moreover, cloning will be helpful in organ transplants, and this will absolutely mitigate the harshness of death among people due to organ failure by facilitating production of suitable organs for transplant (Brannigan, 2001).
- Brannigan, M. E. (2001). Ethical Issues in Human cloning: cross-disciplinary perspectives.
- Hernandez, D. R. (2016). The Ethical Ramifications of Human Cloning.
- Myers, S. (2016). The Implications of Human Cloning.
- Rhind, S. M., Taylor, J. E., De Sousa, P. A., King, T. J., McGarry, M., & Wilmut, I. (2003). Human cloning: can it be made safe?. Nature Reviews Genetics, 4(11), 855-864.
- Saad, L. (2002). Cloning of humans is a turn off to most Americans. Gallup News Service.