For more information
Call 1-800-351-0222
Call 1-800-351-0222
Morality of Cloning
Term Paper ID:27092
Get This Paper Free! or
Essay Subject:
Examines some of the moral & ethical concerns involved in the potential of creating cloned human beings.... More...
5 Pages / 1125 Words
0 sources, 0 Citations,
OTHER Format
$20.00
More Papers on This Topic
Paper Abstract:
Examines some of the moral & ethical concerns involved in the potential of creating cloned human beings.
Paper Introduction:
Advances in medicine and biology offer great possibilities for future medical procedures and for entirely new procedures such as genetic splicing to create new forms of life for good or ill. These new possibilities bring with them great responsibility and require that experimentation and development in biology be conducted following ethical precepts. The issues raised are not simple and are not easily answered, making it all the more vital that critical thinking be developed and applied to issues of bioethics. Cloning is only the newest scientific advance to raise such issues, but it is an issue we need to consider carefully and an issue that cannot be decided on the basis of first impressions alone. It raises questions of ethics and morality, and it poses a threat to our sense of self and of our own uniqueness and autonomy. Human cloning is not yet possi
Text of the Paper:
The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper.
Cloning is used to produce stronger and healthier plants, but ithas the potential to produce weaker and less hardy plants. Will it be amoral decision to do this? It raisesquestions of ethics and morality, and it poses a threat to our sense ofself and of our own uniqueness and autonomy. We once couldbehave as if our small corner were the entire world, but today we know thatwhen we drink a cup of coffee we are affecting rain forests in Colombia.Such linkage is a new fact of present reality, and the choices we need tomake are no longer simply "natural" biological choices but moral choices. The world is now smaller interms of transportation and communication, and so we find ourselves in aworld where we are more intertwined with everyone else. To this end,what we need now, say these theorists, is a larger morality, one that isglobal rather than local. These issues have to beapproached individually to determine the elements involved, the ways inwhich traditional ideas and values are challenged by new procedures or newgenetic engineering, and how the human beings involved are affected, howthe environment may be affected, and how society as a whole is affected.Critical thinking is vital in making these determinations and in analyzingthe issues to find the moral position in each case. The essential fact of sex in both plants and animals,meaning that hereditary material from two individuals is joined to form anew entity, and the sex cells provide diversity so that each offspringproduced is unique in its combination of traits. The development ofany ethical structure may depend on where on the continuum between thesetwo extremes one begins to analyze the issue. The dilemma we then face shows how difficult these decisions can be--we may see the preservation of life as the highest good, but more and morepeople are asking about the quality of that life and to what degree thewishes of the individual in the matter should be considered. Our history shows that we have always striven to create a betterworld, not one where old problems, genetic or otherwise, are propagated.The government has responded by considering rules to prevent human cloningbefore it starts, and President Clinton has called for regulations. Some ofthese new technologies are intended to extend life, but we have come to seethat the real issue may be the quality of life rather than the fact of italone. The cloning of plants is an established practice, andit is instructive. The word "clone" is derived from the Greek "klon," meaning twig orslip, and the word refers to asexual reproduction, or vegetativereproduction, which makes use of a slip or twig from the parent plant tocreate a new plant. The new plant has only one"parent," and the new plant is usually genetically identical to the oldplant. Is it really a greater good or a new ill? It should be kept in mind that there is no way to make a finaldetermination of the moral rights and wrongs possible in biology andmedicine because new issues are arising all the time. They state that morality is notconcerned with obeying laws of nature but is instead that it is concernedwith facing facts as they relate to a larger plan or vision. They state that what we call our naturalmorality was once sufficient to keep us moral. Cloning threatens thisimage in many ways. Even a global morality will not answer all the questions raised by newdevelopments in medicine and biology, however, and often the issue isspecifically whether because we can do something means we should. Cloning issuch a challenge and raises ethical issues that have to be discussed longbefore such research is ever started, and perhaps so such research is neverstarted. Cloning maybring new life into the world, but will that be quality life? The institutional frameworks of science--academia,engineering firms, drug companies--involve class, race, and genderhierarchies of scientific workers, and only those near the top of thesehierarchies can even claim to function autonomously. Cloning does not involvesexual reproduction, and this means that the cloned plant is not theproduct of a union of different material. These new possibilities bringwith them great responsibility and require that experimentation anddevelopment in biology be conducted following ethical precepts. There are those who believethat there is a natural law that is to be followed in making thesedecisions and that we have to be true to nature in making our ethicaldecisions, while others argue with this idea and see a differentimperative, holding that there is no reason we should follow natural lawsor emulate the patterns we see in nature. The classical point ofview is expounded by researchers in "basic" natural science--thestudy of nature without an immediate practical goal--who like to think ofthemselves as an autonomous intellectual community following agendas set bythe internal history of science and adhering to principles of pluralism,openness, and competition, which are thought to assure "objectivity." Bycontrast, the "radical science" movement emphasizes that the pose ofscientists as an autonomous group producing objective "knowledge" isillusory. Cloning is only the newest scientific advance to raise suchissues, but it is an issue we need to consider carefully and an issue thatcannot be decided on the basis of first impressions alone. Human cloning is not yetpossible, though it may be in the future, and it poses issues as diverse ashow we tell one person from another and raises anew the issue of the roleof parents and the need in a society for a diverse genetic pool from whichfuture generations will emerge not carrying the genetic problems of thepast but with a new and improved genetic structure. Do we really want to produce a new generation that is weaker than theold? The issuesraised are not simple and are not easily answered, making it all the morevital that critical thinking be developed and applied to issues ofbioethics. There are two poles to the debate over scientific ethicalmatters, with gradations between them. Such a dangerexists with human cloning as well. It is necessary to apply critical thinking even to the determinationof what underlying ethical structure to apply. This apparent autonomy derives, they say, from the congruence ofthe career interests of scientists and the economic interests of dominantsocial sectors. Advances in geneticsraise issues that are also entirely new. Advances in medicine and biology offer great possibilities for futuremedical procedures and for entirely new procedures such as genetic splicingto create new forms of life for good or ill. Thisresponse alone shows that while we are willing to accept benefits fromcertain biological technologies, we are not willing to accept a challengeto our humanity and individuality, which is all to the good.
If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again:
or
We can write a Custom Essay just for you.
Browse Essays by Subject