Introduction

Perhaps the most important scientific topic that has attained much importance in the international media over the past few years is human cloning. Much has been written about human cloning and its advantages as well as the often unfounded fears of people who see it as a scientific catastrophe that can spell the doom of 'natural' mankind. While many of these fears can be cast aside as the fictions imagination of a fertile mind, cloning can be indeed be assessed negatively in an ethical as well as scientific perspective. While agriculture and animal husbandry has got a tremendous boost because of cloning endeavors, the fact that human cloning cannot be merely seen in a scientific perspective makes the ethical and moral aspects of human cloning a highly contended issue. For example, do we have the right to make 'copies' of human beings whose qualities and capabilities are, to a reasonable extent, selected and manipulated by us? Do we have the right to interfere with the natural processes of nature? What are the ethical implications if a child is born from the somatic cells of a parent? What ethical and moral considerations would come to the fore if the child will have to distinguish between its biological and surrogate parents? Such questions do prove that cloning is not a mere scientific breakthrough that must be pursued with all possible zeal. All the ethical and emotional trauma and confusion of the resulting child and the future generations must be taken into consideration before human cloning is allowed in our society.

Analysis

After Dolly was 'manufactured' in the lab, cloning came to be scrutinized by people who were much concerned about medical and scientific ethics. Man was suddenly aware to the fact that science was slowly spreading into uncharted domains that were not yet understood fully well by man himself, and this was as serious problem. The seriousness of the matter was partly due to the fear of the unknown, and partly due to the fact that man was not sure whether he could restrain cloning as a controlled procedure within the academic circles at least until its possibilities and limitations were fully explored and documented.

The history of animal cloning is not very old, while the developments in human cloning are very recent. Perhaps, the first conclusive evidence that animal embryonic cells could be manipulated to produce life was first demonstrated by Hans Spemann in 1928, when he demonstrated nuclear transfer experiments. Later in 1938, he was successful in transferring the nuclear content of one cell to another. In fact the method that was used by Spemann in 1938 is still the basis for cloning studies and experiments in our world: a fact, which shows that cloning has not progressed much from the initial stages of its discovery. As cloning experiments became more concentrated on mammals, the attention of scientists fell on man and the possibilities of human cloning were enquired. True facts, as well as misinformation about human cloning spread in the 1980s with many popular fiction authors concentrating on human cloning as their most favored subject. There were of course many controversies and much fraud which went into the experiments of human cloning. Serious efforts made towards studying human cloning as a possibility was formally initiated in 1990, with the human genome project. In 1997, with the successful birth of Dolly, it was almost certain that human cloning efforts will get a new impetus. Further momentum was provided in this direction when scientists were successful in cloning monkeys, which are closely related to man. However, the hopes for a sustained study into human cloning was short lived because due to the rising concerns of the anti-cloning lobby, President Clinton declared a five year moratorium on cloning, which however continued in many labs in spite of the ban. As of today, the debate between supporters and detractors of cloning is raging on to decide whether cloning is indeed unethical and dangerous. [Waite, 2004]

Some advantages of cloning

In therapeutic cloning, the reproductive cells are impregnated with the DNA of a donor and are then allowed to multiply. After a certain stage of cell division, the cells are harvested and transplanted on to the donor. This is also called stem cell transplant because the stem sells from the pre-embryo are removed, so that it may be allowed to develop into tissues or whole organs that can be transplanted into the donor. Such a procedure has many medical advantages. The patient does not have to use immunosuppressant and the question of the donor's body rejecting the new organ tissue is almost non-existent because the cells are derived from the donor. The fact that immunosuppressants need not be administered is in itself a great medical achievement. Such procedures can drastically reduce the need to obtain organs from donors. The risk associated with the organ transplant can also be reduced to a great extent. In addition the receiver will not have to wait for a donor since the technique can be used to create as many donor organs as required. In reproductive cloning, the technology is used to ‘create’ babies through unnatural procedures.

However, scientists who have been studying the effects of cloning for many years now, opine that cloning may not give all the desired effects that scientists are excited about. This is because genetic changes are not always perceptible through physical appearances. For example, a cloned baby may look like a normal baby but the extent of genetic modifications that the cells would have undergone is difficult to assess. Even experienced scientists agree that they cannot say with certainty that the normal biochemical changes could be happening in a cloned baby. Even though it is the somatic cells that are being cloned, there are chances that the mitochondrial DNA of the animal may get modified or altered in the cloning process

In spite of all the potential, cloning is very expensive and highly ineffective. More than 90% of cloning attempts fail to produce viable offspring. Also, more than 100 nuclear transfer procedures could be required to produce one viable clone. Cloned animals tend to have lower immune functions, higher rates of infection, tumor growth, and other disorders. Most cloned animals live in poor health and die early. A perfect example here is the famous cloned sheep Dolly, which develop arthritis and lung cancer and has to be put down by lethal injection. Clones have also been known to die mysteriously. For example, Australia's first cloned sheep appeared healthy and energetic on the day she died, and the results from her autopsy failed to determine a cause of death. Problems also may result from programming errors in the genetic material from a donor cell. When an embryo is created from the union of a sperm and an egg, the embryo receives copies of most genes from both parents. A process chemically marks the DNA from the mother and father so that only one copy of a gene is turned on. It may be the paternal or maternal gene. This process is known as imprinting. Defects in the genetic imprint of DNA from a single donor cell may lead to some of the developmental abnormalities of cloned embryos.

Human cloning has come under much criticism and many feel that it is unethical and also very dangerous. Most experts say that there is no real guarantee that the cloned humans would be normal. This argument is strengthened by the fact that a large number of cloned animals have developed various physical and mental disabilities over the years. As mentioned earlier even the first cloned sheep Dolly has developed a severe case of arthritis and has died recently due to these complications. During human cloning, the fetus might suffer from some disorder that is not detectable by ultrasound. They may be born with disabilities or may develop disabilities later in their lives.[McGee, Glenn 2002]

Most scientists are of the view that cloning is an unnatural process that interferes with the normal cycles of nature and hence, should be discouraged at any rate.

One of the major arguments against human cloning is that large scale human cloning could reduce the diversity we find among human beings. The humans can lose their identity as individuals because of cloning. It is diversity among humans that drives evolution and adaptation. It is due to the human ability to adapt to any condition that they are able to survive in this world. Large scale cloning can seriously harm the human ability to adapt and evolve in any environment. Some people believe that cloning could have negative effects on relationships. A child born of the adult DNA from his parents is actually a delayed twin of one of his parents. This could have serious emotional effects on the family. The embryos that are used to make clones could also be used as a business commodity. Surplus embryos could form a market, where embryos are bought and sold.[ Kass, Leon 2002]

Other than the issue of the psychological traumas of a child that could be produced by cloning, there are much more important ethical issues that are concerned with cloning. So far, cloning has not been demonstrated successfully in human beings are therefore it is wise to turn our attention to more contemporary issues rather than thinking about the future. Many scientists and medical practitioners feel that the women who may be enticed to undergo cloning experiments may have to bear a lot of trauma and risk in the course of the experiments. Many feel that the undue risks to which, women may be exposed, does not justify cloning as a medically recommended research procedure [Rifkin, 2002]

Many scientists believe that cloning is not the answer to many of the diseases with which the modern man is constrained to deal with. The reasons for these diseases are both a play of the environment and the genetic makeup of man. Hence, there needs to be more proactive environmental role from man than trying to solve every issue through the use of clones. Scientists, who oppose cloning are alarmed at the fact that today, if harvesting cells from an embryo that is a few days old is justified due to medical reasons, tomorrow, medical compulsions may justify harvesting cells from embryos that are full grown. The thin line between medicine as a recuperative science and a science that removes the quality and diversity in human life would be further obliterated due to such practices [ Gardner, 2003].

Despite the potential for harm and abuse that cloning techniques could be used for, scientists have maintained that cloning could open the doors to a wider variety of techniques that could be used to suppress or at least mitigate many of the medical problems seen in the society today. They also cite a number of diseases which cannot be hoped to be cured by any other techniques presently available in the world. In fact this statement cannot be believed because our experience with the powerful and very useful nuclear sciences has given us different lessons on the responsible use of technology. The ethical question is whether we should ensure the destruction of our future generations in the name of medical science finding a cure. The medical science has the responsibility to save a life and ideally should not tolerate partiality between Lives: however insignificant it might seem to be. In the case of therapeutic cloning, the life of the embryo is sacrificed for saving the life of a person who can either afford to do so or who is held in so much high esteem that lives can be wasted for his exclusive use. It is possible that that this person is highly valuable to society but when the question of life is concerned, he and the insignificant embryo are equal. It seems that the medical science would conveniently like to forget this fact, which is a basic truth and requirement of this branch of science. Only unethical practices would find a difference between the embryo and the grownup. It is shuddering to note that the human embryo could be 'farmed' in the future to cure many diseases. . Pro life supporters, who believe that the embryo is a human person, object that manipulating and killing a human embryo accounts to nothing short of murder. They feel that during cloning, embryos are treated as a commodity and not as a living human being[ Wilson, James 1998]

Reproductive cloning tries to mitigate the natural selection process and partiality imposed by nature. Hence we have a scientific system that claims that it can try and reduce the differences in human beings which have been imposed by nature. Hence reproductive cloning can eliminate a variety of problems associated with natural selection and at the same time provided children to those who are restricted by nature to not to have a child. Even psychologists join forces with the proponents of cloning in these issues. While these arguments may seem true we can see that reproductive cloning actually interferes with the nature whose biggest strength is the huge variability among species. Without variability and the inherent differences in species, life would not have been possible in the face of this earth. [ Gardner, 2003]

The experiments with genetic engineering and techniques, cloning and the prolongation of human lifetimes, are the measures with which we are evolving to meet the challenges of the evolutionary and ecological problems arising out of conscious control of the reproductive environment by humans. However, these scientific measures used in forcing human evolution pose certain very pertinent challenges signified by a stage when evolution could occur in even months, as proposed by many authors. Also human-type minds are optimal only given the constraints of human neurology. Cloning and copying genetic modules may not contain precisely the same types of components of which human minds are composed. As Bostrom comments, 'this would imaginably lead to a technologically highly advanced world, containing many sorts of complex structures, in which there would, nonetheless be a complete absence of any type of being whose welfare has moral significance. In a sense, this would be an uninhabited world, a world in which human beings have gone extinct.' [Bostrom, 2001]