Do you agree or disagree with the following statement?
	"The cloning of a human would be unethical under any circumstances."
Please review the arguments for and against the statement and enter your response.
		Pros Through the ages, religious leaders, philosophers, as well as the average layperson, have struggled with the concepts of right and wrong. What should we do? In the case of human cloning, the answer is clear
		Cons we should not clone humans. There is no ethical or scientific reasoning that justifies this act. From an ethical perspective, human cloning would violate man's belief in the sanctity of the individual. As philosopher Immanuel Kant stated in the "categorical imperative" he wrote back in the 18th century, "So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as a means only." A human clone would always represent a means to an end: a way to pass on "desired" traits. A clone would be viewed as a collection of genes, rather than as a unique individual. If you accept the notion that such traits should be copied, there is still no guarantee that the clone will have the athletic ability, business acumen, or mental ability of its parent. The personality and abilities of an individual are the products of both genetics and environment. The DNA of a clone may be identical to the parent, but there is no way to ensure that the clone would have the same life experiences. From a practical perspective, there are simply too many opportunities for abuse of the process. Who's to say that a government wouldn't decide to create a perfect race or wouldn't use the process to select for a specific gender? Such abuses have already occurred in our history, only the methods used were different. From a scientific perspective, there are too many dangers associated with cloning. Genetic defects could, unwittingly, be passed to the clone. The mortality rate associated with the cloning process is too high. We don't know enough about the long-term effects of cloning upon the clone and his/her future offspring. Just because scientific breakthroughs mean that we can do something doesn't mean that we should do something. Humans should not be cloned.:There are many reasons why the cloning of a human would be both ethical and desirable. Suppose that an infertile couple wants to have a baby, cloned from either the husband or wife. Imagine a couple in which the male has sickle cell anemia, and by cloning the female, the couple need not risk having a child with the disease as well. Picture a set of parents who lose their only child as the result of an accident caused by a drunk driver. Cells from the child could be used to clone another, who would certainly never replace the child that died, but would it be fair for the world to lose out on the gifts of this individual, simply because of the recklessness of another? Human cloning is a definite solution to specific problems. The "farming" of genetic traits is not being advocated, simply the use of technological breakthroughs to address the reproductive needs of individuals. In addition, if it is decided that human cloning is unethical, and should be disallowed, then it won't take long for that ban to extend to the cloning of human cells or to the cloning of animals and animal cells. The ability to create cells on an as-needed basis has tremendous applications for medicine and its treatment and prevention of disease. Cloning is a logical outgrowth of the advances that have been made in genetic technologies and, used judiciously, promises to advance the frontiers of medicine even further. Whether the cloning of humans is ethical depends not on the nature of the process, but upon the context in which it occurs. Human cloning can be ethical in many circumstances.
[view results for this question]
More Questions
Additional Question #1