We can define Human Cloning as the making or creation of a exact copy of a human being ("Human Cloning"). Both scientists and humanists had been debating for a long time on whether or not human cloning would be ethical and possible to realize. There are two types of human cloning "therapeutic cloning" and "reproductive cloning". Therapeutic cloning is about using cloning of adult cells for medicine and reproductive cloning is involved in making cloned humans ("Human Cloning"). Even though we are now able to create clons from animals, there had been both succesess and failures on these procedures. One example is Dolly the sheep, the first successfully cloned mammal; she got very sick and eventually died. "Improvements in cloning technology have enabled researches to generate mouse, cattle, goat, pig, deer, rabbit, cat,mule, and horse clones" ("Stem Cell Research"). Using one essay "The singularity is Near" from our couse pack by Ray Kurzweil, the play "A Number" by Carly Churchil and several videos related to human cloning from our LIB 110 class I will discuss the different opinions related to the future benefits and harms of the introduction of human cloning to our every day life.
In the excerpt of the book, The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzwiel is presented a very optimistic view about human cloning and how it will be very benefitial for medical purposes. Even though the author thinks that it is too soon to assure that human cloning can be done with out any mistake, he is sure that this will happen some day. The author suggest that "Once technology is perfected in terms of safety, the ethical barriers will be feeble if they exist at all" (Kurzweil 122). Ray Kurzweil makes very important assumptions, explaining that cloning in general will be very productive for the development of our future societies. With cloning is possible to get animals with desirable sets of genetic traits (Kurzweil 122). It also will be useful for pharmaceutical production. Cloning will also be useful to bring back extinct species and to protect those which are in danger. The author basically is completelly positive about the use of not only human cloning but the use of these technique for different purposes. The author writes "cloning technologies even offer a possible solution for world hunger: creating meat and other protein sources in a factory with out animals by cloning animal muscle tissue (Kurzweil 124). This means that by allowing the cloning features be a part of our scientific aproaches with out criticize it as not ethical or harmful to us, we will get a lot of benefits like less expensive food.
The play A Number by Carly Churchill present to us a very different point of view about human cloning. The author shows the story of a person who decided to clon his son and sent the original away; but what he didn't know was that not only one clon was made, there was lots of them; which at the end generated a lot of conflicts. The father whose name is Salter was very agressive, a bad father and a bad husband too. Which is why her wife killed her self. Since there was a lot of conflicts between he and his son Bernard, he took a drastic decision, to clon his son and forget completelly about him. Salter was a very good father with the clon B2, he treated him very well; but he started to question all the things that happen with the original son, so he found a lot of terrible things. Thanks to the actions of the father the original son grew up been agressive and negative about life; he hated his father and the other son too. B1 some how believed that B2 took his life away and that the father was loving B2 more than him. All the cloning stuff generated feelings of hate and frustration on B1 so he decided to kill B2 and eventually kill him self. With this play we can realize how frustrated will some persons feel knowing that they have been cloned. Some of them would suppose that their lifes and their own selves had been taked away; pushing them to do dangerous things or taking wrong decisions.
In our LIB 110 seminar, we saw some parts of the movie The 6th Day; which shows the story of a man who finds out that he has been cloned and that some how his life has been taked away. This movie shows that some how people are seen as material things, like a cell phone which you can replace with a new one at any time. Humans will eventually be replaced with a clon. The main character in this movie finds out that his family, his wife and children are with a clone of him self doing all the usual things that they use to do with him!. He tried to do a lot of things to get his life back. This movie has a especial connection with the play A Number, because both of them show all the bad things that cloning humans could bring. They also show how cloning a person means taking away his identity and his life. Both the director of this movie and the author of this play portray cloning in a bad way; they think that it affects the person cloned in his personality and social interactions for the rest of their lifes.
In conclusion, I believe that we will never arrive to an argument strong enough to support or criticize the idea on whether or not human cloning should be realized. Also it is important to realize that other types of cloning can also bring benefits like a less expensive kind of meat giving us economic benefits. Human cloning would maybe gave us the opportunity to extend our life or make us immortal; it also can bring animals back from extiction or protect those in danger. On the other hand it can take away the opportunity for us as induviduals of be unique; making us in extreme situations take dangerous decisions like maybe killing somebody or our ourselves.
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