When most people are asked to list some major bioethical issues, one of the first things that they think of is cloning. For some reason, probably due to a lot of popular science fiction, many people are fascinated by the concept of cloning and are both scared and excited by the potential that human cloning technology has.
“Cloning” refers to the process of creating an organism that is genetically identical to another organism, usually with the original already being alive. Cloning happens all around us in nature; bacteria and some plants reproduce asexually, making exact copies, or clones, of themselves. We are all cloning laboratories; the bacteria that live inside us are constantly replicating, as are almost all of the cells of our body (with some exceptions such as sex cells or neurons). Obviously, though, this is not what most people are referring to when they talk about cloning. Personally, I often think of Star Wars when people mention cloning; the idea of an entire army made up of copies of just one person is, for some reason, strangely fascinating. When it comes to cloning, though, as with most major ethical issues, the population is divided.
One of the main arguments against cloning is the idea that humans are playing god, unnaturally creating life that was never supposed to have existed in the first place. As a result, many religious groups are strong opponents of human cloning under any circumstances. UNESCO takes a similar stance: two of the major issues that it cites with the ethics of human cloning are that it is a contrary to human dignity and that harvesting embryonic stem cells that would be used to create a clone is essentially destroying a potential life. In addition, many people are simply uncomfortable with the idea of cloning in general, as it raises some very tough questions about identity and what it means to be alive. If human cloning ever were to become a reality, there would almost certainly be a stigma against those who were created by science in a test tube instead of those who were conceived and born naturally.
There are certainly arguments for cloning: it could create a theoretically infinite source of organs and stem cells specific to a single person’s genome that would keep them healthy and alive far past their due and it would be scientifically interesting if nothing else to see if cloning is truly possible or not. However, I personally cannot get behind the idea of cloning. In my mind, there is almost no noble reason to go about making a clone of someone. Other than simply using the clone, which is still a full human being, for scientific testing or as a source of organs just waiting to be harvested, there seems to be no legitimate reason to ever create a full clone. To me, the entire idea just seems wrong and I don’t think I could ever be persuaded that it would be a good idea.