Alperen Kürşad Ertuğrul 1.12.

2024
2215044
Response to cloning

Would you be willing to clone a sheep or a species that no longer exists, or yourself?
The “Human cloning debate: Why do it? Who’d be hurt? Should it be legal?” is an article
discoursing the ethical, scientific, and sociological side of cloning. The author presents
examples and quotes about the topic and makes the reader think. It encourages us to question
if cloning is socially, ethically, or scientifically acceptable. Possibilities, examples, and risks
of cloning are also mentioned in the article, however, it does not include the author’s ideas as
he prefers to share expert quotes for possible problems or questions we can have.

First of all, cloning does not have to be immoral, but it could be. For example, a
person cloned to be a donor for another would not feel good about it, because the reason
he/she exists is because one other person was suffering. If that person were to be healthy, he
would not exist. However, if cloning is going to raise such moral problems why not just ban
cloning for the pure intention of creating a donor? If the laws are properly enforced, this
ethical problem would perish. There are yet other ethical problems that would hurt more than
a person’s feelings though. According to Rugnetta (2024), reproduction relating to human
reproduction introduces high risk, which means a change of life loss is very probable. Any
loss of life and pain regarding cloning cannot be tolerated, but with the advancement of
technology, I do not believe this will be the case forever. Cloning is a part of biology and
science, and with every step forward in these professions, we are one step closer to cloning
without anyone suffering. As humanity, it would be such a waste to give up on cloning just
because we are not capable of it right now. We have been incapable of many matters, it was
our dedication and curiosity that the Earth is now ruled by humanity. Humanity cannot and
will not give up on cloning, we cannot just waste a potential, our curiosity will not let us.

The potential of cloning has not yet been fully comprehended. The reason for that is
humanity is not very advanced concerning the subject. We are not even close to fully
understand cloning, because of that, we can only speculate how far we can go. Cloning would
be such a relief for many afflictions, humanity just have to find ways to exercise it properly.
As Seedhouse (2014) mentioned, a possible way to clone organs would eradicate countless
problems. HRSA (2024) states that only in America, more than 100.000 people waiting for a
life-saving organ transplantation. The black market for organs is also high. I cannot imagine
how many innocent people, kids, and even babies are killed for their organs, imagine how
their organs were harvested out of their bodies while they were breathing. Cloning could put
an end to this torture, just like how it could put an end to many diseases. V. Bordignon
explains the matter in his work “Comprehensive Biotechnology (Second Edition)” ( 2011).
According to him, cloning has already been a thing among the science world with Therapeutic
cloning. Therapeutic cloning aims to replace a part of one’s body tissue that is traumatized,
injured, or diseased using embryonic stem cells. This way, no one would need other people’s
organs as every single tissue in the human body is now replaceable. The other potential
benefit of cloning would be cloning livestock. Breeding animals has been a hassle for farmers,
it is hard, and they cannot know if the livestock in question is healthy or not. The traits of the
new calf are completely random and it can have some genetic diseases that are impossible to
treat. In Eenennaam’s (2006) view, with cloning though, it would be possible to reproduce
livestock without taking such pesky risks. Do you have a completely healthy cow? Just clone
it and that's it. On top of that, there is also genetic engineering which would let you add new
perks and traits to your perfectly healthy cow. In order to maximize productivity and lessen
the unexpected events in agriculture, genetic engineering would be excellent.

For all these reasons, cloning should be perfectly fine for us to use. It may be early to
use it for now, but cloning is just a tool waiting to be improvised and regulated properly. We,
humanity, would have such a powerful tool in our inventory without thinking about any
ethical or futurological concerns if it were to be developed to perfection. Rhind (2003) states
that we should not argue about how monstrous it is to exercise cloning right now but argue
about discovering alternatives.

To conclude, cloning has been a controversy for years regarding how it is practiced.
The science world argues about whether to develop it or to give up on it altogether. For me, it
is just a hidden gem waiting to be ripped up from the heart of the unknown. With cloning,
many worries could be destroyed such as; curing diseases, cloning organs, and bioengineering
livestock. We have an opportunity on our hands as humanity, let’s focus on improvising
instead of shutting it down altogether.