As for any controversial
issue, the legalities that lie beneath the cloning issue are diverse and
vital. The issue clashes with not only moral beliefs but religion
as well. If human cloning were to occur, this would challenge our
very constitutional belief that everyone is created equal. Equal
meaning the same means of creation under similar environments. Cloning
clearly defies the laws of nature.
Furthermore,
who is to determine, how much is too much. On one hand, cloning is
useful for medical
purposes such as finding cures, conversely it can also be used
for paving a path to destruction. Therefore, how much is too much?
This is a question we all need to ask and decipher an answer for.
The following
are comments made by political, religious, and individual groups in a 1997
survey.
The following are the results from a 1997 CNN poll conducted among 1,000
American adults and their view on cloning:
89% felt that cloning humans was morally
unacceptable.
66% felt that cloning animals was morally
unacceptable.
69% are scared of the possibility of cloning humans.
74% believe that human cloning is against God's will;
19% disagree.
Cloning violates our very constitutional rights, does a clone have the
same rights as a non-clone? This brings with it many unanswered questions.
Does a clone have a soul? Many people have questioned whether a cloned
embryo will have a soul. Theoretically, a soul is weightless, colorless,
odorless, and has never been detected by any measurement and may not exist.
So can a clone be considered a "real human"? Although it has the
same genetic material as a real human, its means of creation differ; nature
vs. technology. Taking this into consideration, is cloning
"playing God". The power of creation is often times referred to a
higher authority, cloning defies that referral and takes matters into its
own hands. Is he or she and equal comparative to its twin?
If cloning were used to weed out genetically defective fertilized ovums,
that could lead to the murder of one of the clones during the genetic testing.
Would this be a potential charge of murder? Furthermore, the experiments
with cloning could be advantageous to the homosexual population.
In a time that we are trying to find the origins, perhaps genetic, of homosexuality,
cloning would be a way for this genetic trait to survive. Perhaps
even more frightening, cloning has the potential of giving women absolute
control over reproduction, and if carried to its "logical extreme", eliminate
men altogether. This is a perfect example of how cloning is a threat
to evolution and nature. These are just a few of the many riveting
unanswered questions that will continue to haunt our very souls until the
constraints on cloning are established and for what purpose this procedure
will serve without threatening the laws of nature. Afterall, nature
itself is the greatest cloning agent.
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