Thread: Cloning Survey

Hi. Please take your time to do my survey for one of my project at school.
Do you think cloning is a good/bad thing? Please tell me why do you think so.
Thanks

The question is a little vague. Here are some answers:

Cloning of animal and plant cells for laboratory studies - approve.
Cloning of human cells for laboratory studies - approve, when monitored by independent body
Cloning of animal organs for laboratory studies - approve
Cloning of aninmal organs for human transplant - approve with safeguards
Cloning of complete animals for laboratory studies - approve with reservations
Cloning of human organs for transplant - approve with safeguards
Cloning of humans - disapprove

I'm OK with research and organ transplant applications of cloning, but definitely not with human cloning... it's too risky. We don't know enough about it yet to go around cloning people, much more research is needed to be done.

Cloning of animal and plant cells for laboratory studies - approve.
Cloning of human cells for laboratory studies - approve, when monitored by independent body
Cloning of animal organs for laboratory studies - approve
Cloning of aninmal organs for human transplant - approve with safeguards
Cloning of human organs for transplant - approve with safeguards
Cloning of humans - disapprove

pretty much the same for me, except

Cloning of complete animals for laboratory studies - approve with reservations

i don't agree with this. i can definitly see why i should, but i can't. aside from the cruelity involved: they don't have a choice. if someone stole my dna, and cloned me, *god help the world if they did - damien overload!* i'd be pretty angry.

but its a thin line for me, aside from that, i think it would be usful...

hope that helps some.

Originally Posted by goodgod3rd

pretty much the same for me, except

Cloning of complete animals for laboratory studies - approve with reservations

i don't agree with this. i can definitly see why i should, but i can't. aside from the cruelity involved: they don't have a choice. if someone stole my dna, and cloned me, *god help the world if they did - damien overload!* i'd be pretty angry.

but its a thin line for me, aside from that, i think it would be usful...

hope that helps some.

Ophiolite has it nailed, but why disapprove of cloning complete animals?
This follows along the same lines as other animal testing in the medical field. Without it, we wouldn't have vaccines for polio, rubella, and a host more; no insulin; no open heart surgery; etc...
And to me, that cruel!

Cloning of animal and plant cells for laboratory studies - approve.
Cloning of human cells for laboratory studies - approve
Cloning of animal organs for laboratory studies - approve
Cloning of animal organs for human transplant - disapprove
Cloning of complete animals for laboratory studies - approve
Cloning of human organs for transplant - disapprove
Cloning of humans - disapprove

Originally Posted by Ophiolite

The question is a little vague. Here are some answers:

Cloning of animal and plant cells for laboratory studies - approve.
Cloning of human cells for laboratory studies - approve, when monitored by independent body
Cloning of animal organs for laboratory studies - approve
Cloning of animal organs for human transplant - approve with safeguards
Cloning of complete animals for laboratory studies - approve with reservations
Cloning of human organs for transplant - approve with safeguards
Cloning of humans - disapprove

Completely agree with you, except for

Cloning of complete animals for laboratory studies - approve with reservations

I can't agree with this, cause, even tho an animal is cloned, it's still an animal and I do not approve any kinda of violence or invasive studies on animals, tho in a certain aspect i understand animal trials....

I don't get the objections to human cloning in itself. Surely the intended purpose of the clone is the more relevant point. A clone must still be born as any other human should be, must still be raised as any other should be, is not measurably less than fully human in any sense (quite the opposite)- so where does the ethical problem lie in the process itself?

Originally Posted by goodgod3rd

pretty much the same for me, except

Cloning of complete animals for laboratory studies - approve with reservations

i don't agree with this. i can definitly see why i should, but i can't. aside from the cruelity involved: they don't have a choice. if someone stole my dna, and cloned me, *god help the world if they did - damien overload!* i'd be pretty angry.

How does this differ from breeding animals for research, which we already do in very large numbers? The only practical difference is the degree of genetic variation between individuals- which would make for much more reproducible experiments. I can understand the arguments against breeding animals for research (though I disagree), but whether those animals be bred by mating or cloning is surely beside the point from an ethics perspective.

Cloning of animal and plant cells for laboratory studies - not cloning, already commonly used, plant cloning has been widely used for millennia.
Cloning of human cells for laboratory studies - approve
Cloning of animal organs for laboratory studies - approve
Cloning of animal organs for human transplant - probably useless
Cloning of complete animals for laboratory studies - approve
Cloning of human organs for transplant - approve
Cloning of humans - disapprove there is no reason for it unless you plan to exploit the clones.

Originally Posted by Twit of wit

Cloning of humans - disapprove there is no reason for it unless you plan to exploit the clones.

It's not implausible that some people would simply wish to clone themselves as a form of reproduction. Your objection isn't to cloning itself, but to the potential abuse of it. Not being able to imagine a positive use for a technology is grounds to dismiss its usefulness, not to have a moral objection to it.

Originally Posted by Twit of wit

Cloning of humans - disapprove there is no reason for it unless you plan to exploit the clones.

Maybe you have heard of him, Panayotis Zavos, a Greek scientist, strong supporter of human cloning. What he is trying to do is enable people who are sterile to have children by cloning them. I personally strongly disagree with that, because, picture this. You have a family, mother, father, daughter who looks exactly like mum and a son that looks exactly like dad o.O Now, by my opinion, those children would be screwed up for life o.O Wiiieeerd family, would never want to live in a family like that, it's just creepy.

Cloning of humans should not be done right now.

Reason :
1. High miscarriage rate, meaning the surrogate mother has the emotional pain of losing a baby.
2. High rate of defective offspring.

However, if we assume that cloning technology is improved to the point where the rate of defects and miscarriages is less than (or at least no more than) normal pregnancies, I have no problem.

Such cloning is likely to become one of the range of reproductive options within 100 years. I see no harm, outside of emotionally hysterical reasons, since it would be just like having a younger identical twin brother or sister.

Don't think human cloning for reproduction should be done until the aging problems and shortened lifespans are solved. I'm not crazy about cloning mammal pets for the same reason.

Originally Posted by JennLonhon

Maybe you have heard of him, Panayotis Zavos, a Greek scientist, strong supporter of human cloning. What he is trying to do is enable people who are sterile to have children by cloning them. I personally strongly disagree with that, because, picture this. You have a family, mother, father, daughter who looks exactly like mum and a son that looks exactly like dad o.O Now, by my opinion, those children would be screwed up for life o.O Wiiieeerd family, would never want to live in a family like that, it's just creepy.

How will we know this is a genuine risk unless we try it? This is, as you suggest, opinion. Scientific opinions are worthless unless they're based on evidence.

We do have some evidence that speaks against your fear, as indicated by skeptic previously- the 11 million sets of identical twins, triplets and so forth currently alive in the world seem to get on just fine.

There's the issue of the Pygmalion problem, does something intentionally created to such an extent have the autonomy of a human being? For those not aware of the myth of Pygmalion, he was an artist who created a sculpture that he fell in love with and Venus turned the sculpture into a real woman. What the Pygmalion dilemma is concerned with is what the social position or status of a "designed" person is. This is more an issue of social engineering than cloning itself though.

I agree with Biologista that there is little to worry about ethically in the act of cloning itself, but there would certainly be broad social consequences if the practice became common place. Would clones face social stigma, would they be treated as an underclass. What happens if we can mass produce clones, if we use cloning to propagate only certain types of people, making it much easier to socially engineer a society.

As of right now though, the limitations of cloning as a technology would involve unethical treatment of serogate mothers and the production of deliberately short lived human beings, as mentioned above. This makes cloning at this moment at least an unethical prospect.