Whose dignity?
The UN General Assembly has okayed a resolution urging its members to adopt legislation "to prohibit all forms of human cloning in as much as they are incompatible with human dignity and the protection of human life." Due to opposition, the final resolution is nonbinding and without legal force. Nevertheless, I think it's a mistake. (If they had tried to ban only reproductive cloning, and not also therapeutic cloning, the resolution could have been binding.)
Cloning offers great hope in fighting illness (and helping the barren). While I understand certain moral qualms, and can see rules and protocols being set up, it seems to me that those in the opposition are the ones whose beliefs are "incompatible with human dignity and the protection of human life."
If the US actually banned cloning, what could follow is reasonably predictable. Europe and Asia would soon outstrip us in research. We'd also lose many of our best scientists. And what if we disallowed the fruits of the research (not to do so would be hypocritical)? Imagine America trying to prevent cures to diseases from entering our country, in essence telling our citizens to stay sick and die. And if you got a back-alley cure, they'd toss the one who helped you in jail. So much for dignity.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:19 AM
1 Comments:
As one of those who is against all human cloning, let me address the issue from that perspective. First of all, I think both sides of this issue sincerely believe that they are on the side of "human dignity and protecting human life." Of course I think that I am on the right side. I don't choose (as others on both sides of this debate do) to judge the motives of the other side.
Secondly before we talk about the main issue: whether human cloning is ethical, it seems that our decision to clone or not should be based on this answer, not what effect it might have on other countries and scientists and so forth.
In brief I am against cloning because I belief that cloned cell or clump thereof is a human person. And as a human person it should not be created to be used by others but for its own sake. If that cloned human cell is a human being then is it right to use it for body parts or any other reason. Some would think so. Others would say that the cloned being is not human or not a person. I understand the counterarguments and I don't think they hold. I was once a cell with all the human potential that the cloned cell has. I was not a sperm or an egg. I was a single pluripotent human cell. And so was every living human.
I recognize that if killed I could provide body parts (and even potentially stem cells) to many others. This would be my paltry life for the salvation of many others. Why is this not a good bargain?
I know too that this subject (just the technical aspects of cloning alone) is way more complex than I have simplistically portrayed it. Still the basics of my argument are, I believe the basics of the argument.
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