Imagine a futuristic, post apocalyptic world where you live in a compound and are told that the outside world has been contaminated. Everyday someone wins the lottery, which supposedly brings them to a paradise that is uncontaminated. Eventually you begin to question why life is so boring and repetitive at the compound. You see a bug crawl through into the compound from a vent, and realize the outside world is not contaminated. Soon after you crawl through the same vent and find a hospital. You discover that everyone living with you is a clone and that when they “win” the lottery, they go to the hospital to get their organs harvested and die. This is how Lincoln felt in The Island, a movie from 2005 starring Ewan Mcgregor. Fortunately, there is not an underground farm with human clones waiting for their organs to be harvested, but if this could be a future possibility as scientists experiment with cloning, would it be ethical?

Types of Cloning

Artificial embryo twinning is one of the easiest ways to make clones, it imitates the natural process that makes identical twins by splitting the embryo in two. Nuclear transfer cloning is when the DNA is removed from an unfertilized egg and injected into the nucleus for the DNA to be cloned. Reproductive cloning is creating an animal that is genetically identical to a donor animal through somatic cell nuclear transfer.

Cloning History

Believe it or not, cloning has been around for hundreds of years. According to an article on Learn.Genetics, in 1885 the

The first cloned mammal, Dolly the (now stuffed) Sheep taken by David on flickr

first successful artificial embryo twinning took place with a sea urchin. Again in 1905, the same type of cloning took place on a salamander. In 1952, the first successful nuclear transfer cloning on a frog egg.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, cloning mammals had been experimented with, and in 1996, a nuclear transfer from an adult somatic cell was successful with the famous Dolly the sheep. In 2005, South Korean scientists managed to clone a pair of Afghan hound puppies. Ever since scientists have continued to experiment with cloning on many different animals, including endangered animals and even humans.

An American biologist named Mitalipov has discovered it’s possible to clone a human. According to this article from The Niche from 2017, Mitalipov has said,”We stand by our study’s key finding that human embryos are capable of effectively repairing disease-causing mutations by using a normal copy of the gene from a second parent as a template. We based our finding and conclusions on careful experimental design involving hundreds of human embryos.”

Cloning Pets

Barbra Streisand’s tweet introducing her cloned dog, Miss Fanny

There are already businesses that clone people’s pets for a high price. Most located in South Korea, the average price being $50,000 to clone a dog and half that price to clone a cat. Barbra Streisand has two cloned dogs. Many people believe this is a nice way to memorize a loved pet. However, many animal rights enthusiasts think it is unethical because the process to clone a dog takes multiple surrogates to get right, along with multiple painful surgical procedures. Bioethicist Jessica Pierce has wrote in New York Times, [perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]“a whole canine underclass that remains largely invisible to us but whose bodies serve as biological substrate.”[/perfectpullquote]

Pros

In the future we may be able to use cloning to clone organs which could save lives. Cloning also can be a substitute for natural production, and in the future cloning could also help us understand more about genetics and possibly prevent diseases. Cloning could also potentially enhance human development. It could help treat traumatic injuries in athletes and people involved in bad accidents. Scientists could prevent global warming by bringing extinct animals back to life, which has been discussed after finding a frozen baby mammoth in Siberian ice in 2007. After finding Lyuba, scientists have been researching to try and clone the frozen baby mammoth. [perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]”When we were children, we would go to the museum and see these large creatures that went extinct. One would be the dinosaur and the other would be ice age animals like the mammoth,”[/perfectpullquote]

says biomedical engineer Insung Hwang, when asked about why he was interested in cloning the mammoth for NBC news. The wooly mammoth theoretically could prevent global warming by trampling tundra to expose the soil to cold air to protect it from thawing out.

According to Green Garage, cloning also get could rid of some defective genes in people, by cloning healthy human cells we could eliminate some defective mutated genes. Cloning could decrease infertility, also by cloning animals, plants, and even people it can benefit others who are living.

Counter Argument

Cloning makes identical genes, and with that we weaken our ability to adapt. We also would take the beauty out of diversity in people. Cloning body organs could be unethical if people begin to farm humans like in The Island. It is expensive, and would most likely not be available for the average person. Another big issue surrounding cloning is whether it is ethical or not. It definitely could put human rights at stake, and already is giving animals a low quality life. Scientists bringing animals back that died out thousands of years ago could wreck ecosystems. A professor at the University of California, Harris Lewin states, “We now understand why clones fail, which can lead to improvements in the process of cloning of animals,” [perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]”Our discoveries also reinforce the need for a strict ban on human cloning for any purposes.”[/perfectpullquote]

If someone who studies cloning thinks it should be banned, don’t you think it could be immoral?

The majority of people agree cloning should be illegal. According to abc news, a poll from 2001 concluded 6 in 10 people believe cloning should be illegal in the U.S. 87% of people believe it should be illegal to clone children. The poll had also found that people who are more religious and women are more likely to be against cloning.

Although cloning could bring us new life, the vast majority of clones die before they are born or while they are young, or they are born deformed. Lisa Howard wrote on UCDAVIS, “Using RNA sequencing, the researchers found multiple genes whose abnormal expression could lead to the high rate of death for cloned embryos, including failure to implant in the uterus and failure to develop a normal placenta.” Meaning the majority of cloned life usually dies quickly.

In Conclusion

Overall there is too many risks to cloning, even if a lot of these are not possibilities yet, they could be as cloning becomes more researched. Cloning is unethical in a lot of situations, and if cloning were to become more popular and successful, it would end up being abused and violating human rights. Cloning could save lives, but it would be expensive and the wealthy people who would be able to afford to buy a clone for organs, can already afford many treatments. The health benefits of cloning are not worth the toll it would take on the clones and on the surrogates.