Could help to provide extra embryos to help post-menopausal
women or women who have difficulties conceiving naturally
Could be used to help parents who are carriers for
mitochondrial genetic diseases such as blindness, epilepsy and
other diseases of the eyes,brains and muscles to produce healthy
children. As long as the egg cell contains healthy mitochondrial
genes, a healthy baby without the gene encoding for the
mitochondrial disease could be produced.
A baby could be created that would be 99.9% the genetic
offspring of its parents but without the inherited disorder.
We should not deprive infertile people of their desire to have
children
There are several other options available to these
individuals, such as sperm donation, surrogate mothers and so on.
Practical limitations exist that make human cloning at the
present moment unfeasible and morally wrong. Much research still
needs to be carried out to perfect the process, reduce the high
rates of failure and to address concerns about the long-term
health of clones. (Click
here for limitations)
Could be used when reproducing with
genetic uniformity is needed or desired
Could be used to provide a donor for transplants or blood
marrow
Could be used to produce a genetically identical individual to
preserve the memory of a loved one
Genes are not the only variable decidiing a person's
characteristics. Physical and mental traits result from a
combination of interactions between a person's genes and the
enviroment (s)he is placed in.
Since the environment surrounding the fetus in the womb can
also affect the expresssion of traits in an individual, the low
likelihood that the clone and the adult it was cloned from would
be have had the same chemical environment in the womb suggests
that they will be two very different individuals.
Cloning is effectively just a delayed identical twin of an
adult. Since identical twins are accepted as separate individuals
with different personalities and traits, there is no reason to
oppose what is more or less the same thing here.
Like twins, clones would have all the same legal rights and
protections of other people. People produced from artificial
methods such as in vitro infertilization are treated the same as
any other human being.
Detrimental to the child's self-worth.
Children produced through natural means have a random
combination of both their biological father and mother's genes,
giving them a unique genetic identity.
Having a genetically identical clone from different
generations could have damaging consequences, especially in terms
of the relationship between child and parent.
A child may end up resenting his/her parents for cloning
themselves for what could be seen as their own selfish reasons,
and could be seen as not considering the cloned child's interests.
Children cloned from famous people or as a replacement for a
lost loved one might have unfair expectations impossed on them
Cloning also brings up the age-old concern about eugenics, a
scientific attempt to improve the hereditary qualities of the
human race. Cloning could be used to selectively breed healthier
or smarter children, and thus change the genetic make up of
society.
Would allow for huge developments in the medical
field
the ease of obtaining embryos for research would enable
scientists determine the cause of spontaneous abortions
since embryonic cells develop at a rate similar to that of
cancerous cells,cloning would enable scientists to understand the
rapid growth of cells in cancer
great advances for therapeutic cloning. Therapeutic
cloning is the production of pre-embryos, which are in effect tiny
masses of cells, from which stem cells could be obtained.
Stem cells are undifferentiated cells that can develop into any
type of cell in the body and are not attacked by a person's immune
system. Thus they can be used to produce a variety of cells, such
as nerve cells (see figure below). These can be used to treat
patients for diseases such as Parkinson's disease.
much could be contributed to the fields of genetics, aging and
medicines.
Using cloned embryos could potentially save thousands of lives
Embryos below the age of 14 days old are already used in
research in medical fields. All cloning would do is make these
embryos.
Many of the embryos that were excessively produced for in
vitro fertilization are used for research. Thus it can be argued
that these embryos were created ultimately to be only used in
research labs, thus the argument against cloning on the rationale
that embryos should not be created just to be destroyed in labs
does not hold.
Researchers at Roslin believe that eventually, therapeutic
cloning can be done without destroying the embryos if the nucleus
of the patient's cell was added to enucleated embryonic stem
cells. The result would be cells that develop directly into the
required cells, such that no embryo would be formed.
It is still not yet established that it would be feasible to
forego the stage of producing embryos in order to obtain stem
cells. Since the suggested new procedure would use stem cells
instead of eggs, there is concern that the recombined cell might
not be fully reprogrammed.
