Hmmm, if its for organs for people who need them is one thing but to just make a person well I dont think that would be right. It seems sensable for kidney and liver, hearts or any organ that can be properly replaced and they should clone only organs that are in popular demand that thousands of people everyday are wating to recieve to continue there life.

Ok, well I always wanted to study genetic engineering at the university (but couldn't because it needs ALOT of money). But anyway, I am impressed of what this science can provide to humans. Let me give you some examples and some point of views concerning this issue...

First of all, cloning has been used before and we all know that but it's not perfect yet because cloned animals either grow with huge organs or die shortly after they are born/created. But let's assume that scientists could clone any animal or maybe human perfectly, what's better than changing one cow into a herd of cloned cows?! This would greatly increase the productivity and maybe help solve alot of starvation problems and even nutrition problems that have a financial base (when there are ALOT of cows in the world, meat won't be expensive relative to some poor countries).

Also, it doesn't stop here, genetic engineering has found great solutions for cancer treatment, and they've shown effectiveness recently. Moreover, genetically improved plants give great productivity and of much better strains. In addition to all that, using some genetic engineering techniques we can detect genetically transmitted diseases (bad genes) through FISH technique and many others, and thus we can replace those bad genes with healthy ones that do not express those diseases. Therefore, after 2 or 3 generations we might be able to abolish all genetically transmitted diseases.

Now, religion and social morals reject most of those techniques for some reasons personally I do not find them eligible. For example, they totally refuse human cloning for the reason that in case that cloned embryo died then we'd be killing a human and as we know there's a big chance that the embryo might die. Also, they claim that we have no right to "create" life by cloning an embryo. But the way I see it, it's "creating" life with the help and supervision of God just like FERTILIZATION! So in brief, I'm totally with cloning, maybe not with human cloning, but I'm definitely with animal cloning and any other genetic engineering technique that would help increase productivity and abolish diseases.

if you mean cloning like cloning people for like military purposes or for testing purposes ( effects of certain drugs or whatever) i think that's wrong and shouldnt be done because human life is unique and people shouldnt be used as lab rats. if you mean cloning like animals like chicken, cow and watever so we could have a lot of food, it think that's ok.

for organs i dont think they'de use cloning for that, but i dont see too much wrongs with that, even though i dont think the organ would function as well as an original.

I would like clones, because the clones could do the stuff we don't want to do Also because they can help us with our work and go to work/school for us so we arent marked absent when we are sick

This post has been edited by ~Nick[;: Jun 1 2008, 02:18 AM

I think that it is worth mentioning that there are several kinds of cloning that already exist in nature, and some of them are already widely used by humans. Most people think that this is something new and "in the future" but it is not..it is here with us!

Take fruit trees. If one is particularly productive, farmers might take a cutting from it and grow a whole new tree... or a whole orchard. They are producing a genetically identical adult from a part of an existing adult. Cloning. And they've been doing this for thousands of years. If we stopped doing it and eliminated all the crops produced in this way, I would be surprised if there was really much left...

Next example is something called parthenogenesis. Some female animals can produce offspring without a sperm. They just become pregnant or lay one of their own modified eggs. Since there is no genetic material involved other than their own, the offspring is again effectively a clone of the mother.

To suggest, then, that cloning itself is immoral would be like saying feeding people is immoral or that a bolt of lightning is immoral. It happens naturally, it is very useful to us, and is so far largely without harm.

Which isn't to say NO harm. I would by lying if I said there were no drawbacks. Genetic diversity is usually a good thing, and having a lot of genetically identical individuals makes a population more vulnerable to disease and less able to spontaneously adapt to external pressures. There is also some concerns about issues surrounding cloning, if not cloning itself: Should clones be property? Should people be allowed to clone others without their permission? Should the government prevent gender ratios (or other traits) from getting unbalanced?

So although I would say that cloning itself is absolutely NOT wrong, there are still many ethical issues involved that need to be resolved before such a practice can become even more widespread than it already is, or those issues might cause even greater problems down the line.