Arguments Against Human Cloning

Human Cloning for Organ Harvesting: The Right to Self-Preservation and Responses to Opposition

After Dolly the sheep was cloned in 1997, the public outcry included questions on the possibility and (im)morality of human cloning. Responding to this burning issue, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the Council of Europe stated their independent positions that human reproductive cloning is wrong as it violates “human dignity” (as cited in Schuklenk & Ashcroft, 2000, p. 32). The European Commission’s advisory department agreed that human cloning is unethical, a decision supported by numerous Christian philosophers in the U.S. and Europe as they explored the vast, harmful consequences of both the research

First, it reduces the demand for organ harvesting from strangers which have turned into a lucrative industry exploiting the poor and disadvantaged who sell their organs for money. The news regularly covers people from low-income communities or developing countries who are forced to sell their organs to gain cash. They get a paltry sum, but considered high enough compared to their monthly incomes, for selling a kidney. However, the surgery may be botched when done in unhygienic settings (due to the need to hide these illegal surgeries and in places in which organ harvesting is banned) and the seller may have medical conditions for life that would prevent him from working. In short, he received a short-term payment but lost his long-term ability to earn money. The worst case is organ trafficking, with cases of people being kidnapped or killed for their organs, including children. Their organs are sold in the black market while surviving victims are physically, socially, and possibly also psychologically and economically scarred for life. Cloning will help put an end to organ trafficking if the government will subsidize its research and ensure that it is low-cost and highly accessible. Second, reproductive and therapeutic cloning can provide the means to reproduce the self genetically, a process that avoids the usual problems in organ transplants that can lead to wasted organs and morbidity or death of the organ recipients. Transplant rejection may occur when the individual 's immune system identifies that the antigens in the organ 's cells are different or not matched. Furthermore, mismatched organs or organs that are not sufficiently matched can stimulate a blood transfusion reaction or rejection of the transplanted organ. Since transplants between identical twins do not always result to transplant rejection, cloning presents a viable way of ensuring fully matched organs. Thus, cloning presents