Cloning and its Impact on the Future of Society

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Hi,

Interesting research project!

Like you probably know, like all academic papers, this paper will include an introduction (e.g. thesis or purpose statement), body (e..g, the questions can act as a tentative outline for the body of the paper), and a conclusion (e.g. tie up main points). One approach to help you with this essay assingment is to look at the four questions individually from various sources, which you can then draw on for your final copy. This is the approach this response takes.

RESPONSE:

A good movie to see on this topic, which might get your brain going, is Gattica. It tells the story of our world many years from now after all humans have been separated into classes of pure genomes and corrupted genomes. Very scary, indeed! Cloning involves very deep bioethical issues, as you may well know. Who gets to decide who gets cloned? Will standards be put in place to control what types of humans are cloned? Who gets access to this technology?

1. Is it society's moral obligation to populate the world with people who have perceived finer characteristics? Explain.

So, since cloning is a highly charged ethical and debated topic, you will need to position yourself as you could argue against this statement. This is if this is a thesis assignment. Unless, it is a paper where you are asked to describe the phenomenon of cloning from the three sociological perspectives, then you are not expected to argue from one position or the other.

When the media report on cloning in the news, they are usually talking about only one type called reproductive cloning. However, there are different types of cloning and, indeed, cloning technologies can be used for other purposes besides producing the genetic twin of another organism. Three types of cloning technologies are: recombinant DNA technology or DNA cloning, reproductive cloning, and therapeutic cloning (see full discussion at URL: http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/cloning.shtml).

Briefly, this question pertains to reproductive cloning. Dolly the sheep was the first successful reproductive cloning e.g. animal clone. Researchers and proponents of cloning argue that if the low success rates can be improved (Dolly was only one success out of 276 tries), reproductive cloning can be used to develop efficient ways to reliably reproduce animals and/or humans with special qualities. For example, drug-producing animals or animals that have been genetically altered to serve as models for studying human disease could be mass-produced. Likewise, society could decide to populate the world with people who have perceived finer characteristics. But is it right and moral? The proponents of cloning would say, "unequivocally, yes!" Conversely, the opponents to cloning would argue say, "'Absolutely not!" Sociologists often take the middle ground, as there are still many unanswered questions.

Ethically and morally (and legally), many sociologists oppose reproductive cloning, and would argue that it is not society's moral obligation to populate the world with people who have perceived finer characteristics. In fact, that is what Adolph Hitler was trying to do and superior race was the "finer characteristics' of being like German people, and all others were inferior and to be exterminated (e.g., Jews). Although this did not involve cloning, per se, it has the same ethical and moral implications. In other words, it is putting the government and science in control of human reproduction. This is a wrong and dangerous concept to the opponents of cloning (body and soul issue, etc.) many people. For the religious people, only God has the right to create and it is through a man and women, not the laboratory. For others, it is ethically wrong because it is not the natural order of the Universe, so it is also wrong and perhaps even dangerous to tamper with nature. For example, the law on bioethics passed by the French parliament in 2004 qualifies reproductive cloning as a "crime against the human species", a clear indication of how threatened the social world feels by certain aspects of genetic engineering (see http://www.cairn.info/resume.php?ID_REVUE=RFS&ID_NUMPUBLIE=RFS_485&ID_ARTICLE=RFS_485_0129).

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