Medical Ethics -- Stem Cells Term Paper

Human cloning also provokes tremendous opposition, mostly from people who do not understand what it means. Typically, it suggests images of quasi-human "clones" as second-class citizens or beings created for forcible slavery or scientific exploitation in the manner sometimes depicted by science fiction movies and literature. In truth, clones already live among us, because every identical twin is actually a clone of its twin (Sagan

1997).

In reality, cloning simply refers to the process of generating a viable fetus from one set of genes instead of two sets contributed by two parents. At the simplest level, this would allow infertile couples and single women to have children whose genes are exclusively theirs instead of having to combine their genes with those of complete strangers to become pregnant. The first successfully cloned mammal was a sheep named

Dolly" created in 1997, but responsible scientists and medical ethicists do not recommend human cloning until the many difficulties associated with it can be solved

The strongest argument in favor of allowing both types of embryonic and cloning research is simply that defining human life as beginning at conception is strictly a religious concept, which is a constitutionally impermissible imposition of church and state in this country. Scientific, medical, and legal ethics must be defined by science and objective ethical principles rather than by subjective religious beliefs. Nowhere is this distinction more important than in considering such beneficial concepts as human stem cell research and cloning technology that hold the very real potential of curing debilitating disease and traumatic injury for so many.

References

Park, a. (2007) the Year in Medicine. Time Magazine; Dec. 3/07 (pp. 63-65).

Sagan, C. (1997) Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium. New York: Random House

Zuckerman, M. (2005) a Bright Hope to Be…