Introduction
Human cloning has been a controversial topic for centuries as scientists see its potential for treating the illnesses and flows of future people’s generations, but the procedure itself is complicated and morally questionable. Today’s state of society and its medical abilities do not provide safe and ethical conditions for the mentioned process. At present time, human cloning should not be allowed due to the protection of people’s rights, avoiding objectivization of children, and procedural dangers.
Protection of Human Rights
Modern science does not allow the transportation of individual experiences and consciousness from one person to another. Human cloning focuses on genetic material but not cognitive characteristics. In other words, it allows for the DNA particles to be copied, but the potentially cloned person would still be a unique individual. Current laws do not provide guidelines for defining this new human as a member of society and a citizen of a particular country (Langois, 2017). Moreover, their psychological state may be unstable as they did not choose to be cloned and differ significantly from the rest of humanity. Unavoidable additional attention from the science community will likely affect the life of a cloned individual as well. They will have no privacy, personal interests, freedom, or choice of status. That violates currently accepted human rights that every modern person should be able to exercise (Langlois, 2017). Thus, potential human cloning requires new regulations in the spheres of jurisdiction and cognitive development.
Avoiding Objectivization of Humans
Making genetic duplication of people a standard and legal procedure could lead to human objectivization. Parents would be able to choose the genetic characteristics of their children, some military leaders might be interested in creating ideal soldiers, and the act of birth will stop being an evolutionary step. The cloned individuals could eventually be regarded as functional biological robots despite the feelings and complex behavior they would still possess being human (Franjic, 2019). The value of one’s life is likely to decrease, although each person would probably still be unique, feel the pain, and have the desire to live. Eventually, such objectivization could lead to the emotional dysfunctionality of humankind.
Procedural Danger
Scientists have attempted numerous genetic experiments trying to clone mammals other than humans. Most of them resulted in failure due to the unpredictable behavior of biological material and the complexity of the procedure (Howard, 2016). A famous case of cloning a sheep in Scotland tested a somatic cell nuclear transfer technique with further development in a surrogate parent animal. It uses electricity shocking to start the cell growth stage, which is not a natural process. However, the mentioned method led to some successful procedures, and scientists began to use it in duplicating farmer animals. Unfortunately, even with modern technologies, less than ten percent of clones survived till birth (Howard, 2016, para. 3). Allowing such a high risk concerning human embryos is unreasonable and potentially psychologically dangerous for the impregnated women. Modern medicine does not possess the appropriate instruments to control the cloning experiments on humans closely.
Conclusion
Human cloning is a controversial topic debated by researchers and philosophers all over the world. The main factor is the personal identity of a cloned individual; he or she will be an independent person with feelings, emotions, and desires. Currently, human cloning should be prohibited due to the protection of a person’s rights, the danger of people’s objectivization, and the unsafety of the procedure. Further consideration may become possible with the changes in social, moral regulations and technological advances in the sphere of genetic engineering.
References
Franjic, S. (2019). Ethical debates about cloning. Aspro Journal of Biomedical and Clinical Case Reports, 2(3), 93-98. 10.36502/20. Web.
Howard, L. (2016). Cow gene study shows why most clones fail. UCDavis. Web.
Langlois, A. (2017). The global governance of human cloning: The case of UNESCO. Palgrave Communications, 3, 1-16. Web.