During this week I have attended a lecture that was very crucial because it was mainly related to human cloning a surrogacy as well as the ethics behind them. Attending this lecture about cloning gave me the opportunity to know more about human cloning, its types and how surrogacy is done as well as the ethical issues that deals with them throughout the world. Therefore, in this reflection, I will discuss the human cloning and the ethical values that relate to it.
A: To Clone or not: The Ethical Question
Human cloning is the creation of a genetically identical copy of a human. This issue and its application is a controversial issue according to the different countries around the world. There are two commonly discussed types of human cloning which are therapeutic cloning and reproductive cloning. I have learnt that therapeutic cloning mainly focuses on adults for the use of medicine and transplants. Reproductive cloning mainly involves making cloned humans, for those kind of couples that need to have a child, but due to natural problems cannot have any kind of children.
Apart from this, the ethics of human cloning has become a great issue around the world. The advocates for both sides of the issue have many reasons to support cloning or not. After attending this lecture I have learnt some of the main pros and cons that are related to cloning. One must understand that cloning does not produce an exact copy of the person being cloned. What cloning does is that it copies the DNA of the person and creates a duplicate genetically. Then after that it depends on the environment as well as the experiences and opportunities in which the person grows up that brings differences between the two people.
After listening this lecture and reading some extra information from different sources, I have identified some potential benefits of cloning and some other hams and disadvantages that cloning has caused to the human life. First, cloning results renewing activity for damaged cells by growing new cells and replacing the old and torn cells. Secondly, it also helped the capability to create humans with identical genetic make-up that enabled to as act as organ donors for each other. Thirdly, cloning has enabled for sterile couples to have offspring that are either from the mothers or fathers genetic pattern.
Apart from the importance and advantages of cloning, I have also learnt and understood from the lecture that there are some other problems and disadvantages in which cloning has brought to the world. These include the possibility of compromising individualities, loss of genetic variation, clones may be treated as a second class citizens and unknown psychosocial harms with impacts on the family and society may occur.
All in all, attending this lecture has opened my eyes to the world and how humans are able to make a copy of themselves by using advanced technology. Thus, I have realised that cloning can easily revolutionise the world and the way we live. After looking all the effects of cloning and how it is going to change the human life, my point of view is that cloning is advantageous to science and medicine because they have showed us their improvement and how they can change the world. Moreover, with my present understanding of the issue, I believe that cloning is a good practice that can bring new way of and improved life to the world that can result the solution to many different problems that arise from socially and individually.
At last, some people believe human cloning is either “playing God” or a breakthrough in the scientific field. Even though much is noted on the ill effect of human cloning, it is beneficial to society because it enables infertile procreation, the knowledge of great thinkers is never lost, and people who have been in terrible accidents can live on even though their bodies can’t be saved. Almost all the time, human cloning gets a bad rap whether it is in movies, or the press spinning cloning experiments out of control. I do not feel that cloning should just be something that we use on an everyday basis, it should be used in moderation.
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