Science is a bad master. With the manufacture of atom bombs, the world stands on the edge of disaster. In the same way, genetic engineering has given rise to surrogate motherhood and human cloning, though its uses to cure fatal diseases are immense. Cloning is a scientific device and, as a part of genetic engineering, it was a great feat performed in the 1990s in the UK. Cloning means producing an exact copy of an animal or a plant from its cells.
In other words, a clone is a plant or an animal that is produced naturally or artificially from cells of another plant or animal and is therefore exactly the same as the original is. In 1997, lan Wilmut and his team cloned a sheep called Dolly. At the same time he admitted that for cloning, one had to experiment a number of times on fetuses. When he cloned Dolly, he had to discard four hundred fetuses before her could get it right. However, he had no hesitation to state that human reproductive cloning is immoral and should not be resorted to. He was charged with playing God The charge is not without truth. Creation is an act of nature. Let us leave it to God alone. Instead of devoting our precious time and resources to human cloning, efforts towards human welfare should be made.
Subsequently, in 2001, Advanced Cell Technology (ACT), a US company, claimed to have cloned the first human embryo. They assured the anxious world that they had no intention of carrying on human cloning. Instead, they were interested in stem cell research with a view to providing treatment for a number of organic diseases.
Whatever the truth is, research is welcome with a purpose to make human life painless and comfortable. Man is already a victim of various incurable diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, diabetes, and AIDS, Genetic engineering holds hope for millions of patients
Science is an amoral subject. Those who consider cloning immoral forget that surrogacy in practice is gaining currency. Even healthy mothers are avoiding to conceive as usual. It is a horrifying idea to think of humans replicated by scientists in a laboratory. While opting for surrogate motherhood, embryos are transplanted in other volunteer women. As such, scientific human cloning is not far away.
Man is well-known for using science for unethical purposes. Take the practice of female foeticide that has been made possible with the help of the ultrasound device The idea of hundred abortions to clone a person is not only unethical but also contemptible. It is feared that genetic engineering is capable of making babies order. Parents in search of perfect babies are likely to encourage human cloning
The fact is that only living human beings can be cloned. It is impossible to clone the dead. After the ACT claim in 2001, Colonaid Company in 2002 also claimed human cloning but no further details were forthcoming. Most of the scientists believe that it has not been done at all. Going by the history of science, human cloning will certainly take place in the near future. Those in denial mode today would find some excuse for human cloning, as the manufacturers of the nuclear bomb have done.
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