In this presentation we are going to give our arguments for and against cloning. We will be focusing mainly on human cloning…… And some animal cloning as well.

Cloning is when you clone of something to make it have identical genes to thing it was cloned from. It is a new cell or individual made by asexual reproduction. A clone has the same genes as its parents. Cloning can be performed on all living things. But many people have mixed views on cloning and feel very strongly about this, especially on humans.

Modern technology allows mammals to reproduce without sex, by cloning body cells. The first cloned mammal is Dolly the sheep. Dolly was cloned in 1996 by the Roslin Institute in Scotland, and was the only successful result from 277 attempts. Scientists produced Dolly by taking the nucleus from a sheep’s udder cell and placing it in an egg cell. The embryo that developed from this new cell was placed into a sheep’s womb, where it continued to develop.

These are some points and views we are going to look at which are against HUMAN cloning. It’s just horrible It involves murdering embryos It is too risky It’s playing god It’s a charter for eugenics It doesn’t respect human dignity- religiously It doesn’t respect human dignity- secular It confuses family relationships and genealogy It might alter population demographics.

It is not for us to play God and to create human beings. God has devised the proper way to make babies, and we shouldn’t interfere with his will by doing it in a different way. This argument makes a whole set of infertility treatments, such as in- vitro fertilisation wrong. So? It’s God’s call. If god doesn’t want you to have babies then you should put up with it. And if God wants you to have a baby with a defect, that too is part of God’s plan and you should go along with defect, that too is part of God’s plan and you should go along with it.

When you ask people about cloning human beings, they often come up with words like: offensive; grotesque; revolting; repugnant and repulsive. They just find the idea simply horrible. Sometimes our feelings of horror communicate real ethical truths: Truths that we find difficult to put in the form of a reasoned argument. Recent research (September 2001) has shown that human beings may rely on emotion as much as reason when they’re deciding moral dilemmas. “We don’t have to write off emotions as silly, murky, irrational responses.” Jonathan Cohen, Princeton University.

“Experiments in human cloning would involve the creation and destruction of human embryos on a massive scale” United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. People who are against abortion at any stage are likely to have problems with human cloning. The process of cloning inevitably involves throwing away some fertilised embryos and at the current stage of development many of the embryos selected to live fail to develop and eventually die before birth. For example to produce a single live cloned sheep called ‘Dolly’, scientists had to crate over 200 sheep embryos; al but one died or were thrown away. Human cloning creates embryos knowing that most of them will be killed.

We are going to give arguments for cloning: “If your best friend was paralysed from the neck down in an accident, would you think it was wrong to sacrifice a 5 day embryo made of 50 cells in order to produce some nerve tissue that would repair the damaged nerves.” “By 14 days the embryo hasn’t produced any organs and there is no nervous system so it can’t feel pain. If we are prepared to kill cows and sheep to eat, why should we worry about a group of cells with a far less advanced nervous system?” “Research on embryos is legal up to 14 days. If something is legal, it can’t be wrong”

There’s no need to argue in favour of cloning. Unless the case against cloning is conclusive, cloning shouldn’t be banned. However, arguments that don’t conclusively show cloning should be banned may be helpful in suggesting restrictions and rules that enable cloning to be done in an ethical and acceptable way. It’s entirely sensible to have a rigorous debate on the issue.

It doesn’t hurt the person that is being cloned If it would harm them they wouldn’t give their permission. If it was done without their permission they would have the same remedies as if they’d been operated on without their permission. It doesn’t hurt the baby Why should he or she feel any different from baby created in the conventional way? And there is no evidence that children born using other forms of assisted reproduction (like test-tube babies) are less valued than those born through natural conception.