Search

In this paper I examine what I take to be the best case for reproductive human cloning, as a medical procedure designed to overcome infertility, and argue that it founders on an irresolvable tension in the attitude towards the importance of being 'genetically related' to our children implied in the desire to clone. Except in the case where couples are cloning a child they have previously conceived naturally, cloning is unable to establish the right sort of genetic relation to make couples the parents of their cloned child. If anybody is the genetic parent of a cloned child it is the natural parent(s) of the DNA donor. Paradoxically, in order to resist the claims of the parents of the donor to the cloned child, the argument for human reproductive cloning must place more weight on the intention to parent a child, than we do in cases of ordinary reproduction. It must insist that the parental relation is established by the intentions of the couple who bring a clone into the world and not by their genetic relation to the child. The emphasis placed on intention as establishing the parental relationship works to undermine the justification for cloning in the first place. For cloning to play a useful role as a reproductive technology, it must allow couples to become parents who could do so no other way. However, to the extent that intention is sufficient to establish parenthood, adoption or surrogacy, which are existing alternatives to cloning, will serve equally well to allow couples to become parents.

The article questions the assumption that conjoined twins are necessarily two people or persons by employing arguments based on different points of view: non-personal vitalism, the person as a sentient being, the person as an agent, the person as a locus of narrative and valuation, and the person as an embodied mind. Analogies employed from the cases of amputation, multiple personality disorder, abortion, split-brain patients and cloning. The article further questions the assumption that a conjoined twin's natural interest and wish is separation. I first contend that separation is such a radical procedure as to render the postseparation person different from the pre-separation one. Therefore, it is not possible to benefit the pre-separation twin by the act of separation. The article concludes with a critical evaluation of the tendency in bioethics to regard ethical challenges as rivalry between individuals competing for scarce resources. Keywords: abortion, cloning, conjoined twins, human body, human person, multiple personality disorder, split brain

The purpose of this paper is to describe the scientific background to the current ethical and legislative debates about the generation and use of human stem cells, and to give an overview of the ethical issues underlying these debates. The ethical issues discussed are 1) stem cells and the status of the embryo, 2) women as the sources of ova for stem cell production, 3) the use of ova from other species, 4) slippery slopes towards reproductive cloning, 5) the public presentation of stem cell research and 6) the evaluation of scientific uncertainty and its implications for public policy.

The British Parliament legalized therapeutic cloning in December 2000 despite opposition from the European Union. The watershed event in Parliament's move was the active and unprecedented government support for the generation and destruction of human embryonic life merely as a means of medical advancement. This article contends that the utilitarian analysis of this procedure is necessary to identify the real world risks of therapeutic cloning but insufficient to identify the breach of defensible ethical limits that this procedure represents. A value-oriented approach to Kantian ethics demonstrates that the utilitarian endorsement of therapeutic cloning entails a contradiction of the necessity of human vulnerability and a faulty valuation of the human embryo. The concern is that a narrow utilitarian focus ultimately commodities human embryonic life and preferences outcomes as the sole determinant of moral value. Keywords: categorical imperative, human embryo, maxim, stem cells, utilitarian

The current debate on the ethics of cloning humans is both uninspired and uninspiring. In large measure this is because of mistakes that permeate the discourse, including the mistake of thinking that cloning technology is strictly a reproductive technology when it is used to create whole beings. As a result, the challenge this technology represents regarding our understanding of ourselves and the species to which we belong typically is inappropriately downplayed or exaggerated. This has meant that important (albeit disquieting) societal issues and species-type concerns have not been fully explored. This paper, intended as a corrective, suggests that we take an alternate view of human cloning as both an enhancement and a reproductive technology. This proposed shift in the framework for analysis counters the current narrow framing of the issues and introduces new questions about the prospect of modifying the species. Keywords: enhancement technology, ethics, human cloning

The purpose of this paper is to show that arguments for and against cloning fail to make their case because of one or both of the following reasons: 1) they take for granted customary beliefs and assumptions that are far from being unquestionable; 2) they tend to ignore the context in which human cloning is developed. I will analyze some of the assumptions underlying the main arguments that have been offered for and against cloning. Once these assumptions are critically analyzed, arguments both rejecting and supporting human cloning seem to lose weight. I will first briefly present the main arguments that have been proposed against cloning and I will argue that they fail to establish their case. In the next section I will evaluate some of the positive arguments that have been offered supporting such technology. This analysis will show that the case for cloning also fails. Finally, I will maintain that because critics and especially supporters of this technology neglect the context in which human cloning is developed and might be implemented, their arguments are far from compelling.

The therapeutic use of stem cells could save many lives but it must be tightly regulated to prevent the cloning of human beings. Stem cells are primitive cells in an embryo that can differentiate and become many different types of cells. They can be used to correct genetic disorders but that means creating an embryo that has the normal form of the gene.

ABSTRACT Many arguments critical of genetic engineering presuppose that it is capable of creating individuals of a specified type or with particular qualities. Recent investigations of neural development yield data [...]

The author compares US and international regulatory responses to human cloning research and proposes the creation of an international agency to regulate such research. The importance of a US role in setting international bioethics and biotechnology policy is discussed.

1) The new biogenetic researches, for example cloning, present once again the ticklish question of the relationship between `science and ethics'. What is your opinion about this? And what part, [...]

An argument against reproductive human cloning is presented. The issue is considered in relation to the broader philosophical question of what constitutes a good human life, and the need for a phenomenology of human value is stressed.

Dr. Wheatcroft is a research scientist with the Food Research Program, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Guelph, Ontario. The views expressed here, solely for the purposes of discussion, are not necessarily [...]

Stem-cell research has significantly contributed to the cause of mankind, allowing new means of treating diseases to be discovered. Despite the help offered by cloning in creating substitutes for heart, bones, nerve and muscle parts, experts still have to face its moral and ethical implications., For John Gearhart, a biologist at Johns Hopkins University, professional life has been an exercise in slamming against walls. Gearhart's specialty is Down's syndrome, triggered when one of the infant [...]

Cloning of humans would not improve the human species and would probably have a negative impact. Cloning involves making a cell or organism that is an exact copy of another. Usually this means that it has the same genes. In higher animals such as Dolly the sheep, this is done by taking an egg, removing its nucleus and replacing it with a nucleus from an adult animal's cell. The egg is placed in an animal's uterus and is ultimately born. The loss of genetic diversity among clones would make them extremely vulnerable. And environment still determines human nature to a large extent.

A ban on human cloning should be enforced until a regulatory agency can be formed to ensure that proponents of cloning can justify the use of this reproductive technique. Cloning of humans is problematic because it would deny the cloned person his or her uniqueness. Most scientists agree that a legislative ban or voluntary moratorium on human cloning is needed.

Human cloning should be allowed in specific cases and regulations and guidelines should be developed to promote responsible use of the technique. Cloning can be seen as another reproductive choice for couples who cannot have a baby because of infertility or genetic disorders. If the couple agrees to raise the resultant child, the sale of cloned embryos could be eliminated. Experience with identical twins shows that having identical DNA does not deny twins individuality and freedom of expression.

The real significance of cloning is that formerly irreversible processes have become reversible. Applied to a larger context, this means what is done can be undone. By this breakthrough, human limits can be overcome or undone. However, this is not so with life. Not everything man does he can undo. Living with the consequences of a bad decision is an undeniable truth. Reversing or undoing the past is different from repentance. Repentance does not alter the past nor does it erase the mistakes that were done.

In April 1988 Abe and Mary Ayala of Walnut, California, began living through every parent's nightmare: Anissa, their sixteen-year-old daughter, was diagnosed with leukemia. Without a bone-marrow transplant, Anissa would [...]

Some have objected to the laboratory cloning of human preembryos on the grounds that the procedure would violate the dignity of and respect owed to human preembryos. Others have argued that human cloning ought be permitted if it will predictably benefit, or at least not burden, individuals who are, unlike the human preembryo, clearly entitled to our respect and concern. Taking this latter position, the legal theorist John A. Robertson has argued that, since cloning does not harm anyone who is clearly entitled to our respect and concern, it should be permitted. In particular, the offspring of cloning, he argues, cannot be genuinely harmed by cloning, since they owe their very existence to the cloning procedure. In this paper, I argue that cloning coupled with its related procedures does in fact place the flesh and blood human offspring of cloning at risk of genuine harm. I thus provide a basis for questioning the moral permissibility of cloning and its related technologies without implying that the human preembryo has dignity or is owed respect. Key Words: genetic identity, harms to future persons, human cloning, reproductive technology

Accustomed though we are to advances in medical technology, a 24 October 1993 news report that human embryos had been cloned astonished many persons. A New York Times story, 'Researcher [...]