Resumo de Reasons To Oppose Human Cloning

Cloning is an unsafe process that sacrifices human life for scientific gain. Attempts to clone humans will utilize the same technology used to clone animals. And, if the experiences of scientists trying to clone animals are any indication, those who attempt to clone humans may be in over their heads. For example, the creation of Dolly required 277 sheep embryos before the nuclear-fusion process was successful. This means that 276 sheep embryos either failed to develop fully or were destroyed because of complications all to clone a single sheep. Experimenting on and destroying human embryos can never be considered ethical or acceptable. A human-cloning project could mean hundreds, if not thousands, of human embryos would be discarded before one human being is successfully created through the nuclear-transfer process.

Once you have a successful nuclear transfer producing embryos for implantation and eventual live birth, the embryos are still at risk. The failure rate for completing the cloning process in animals is a horrifying 95 to 97 percent with most clones dying in utero or being born with severe, life-threatening abnormalities. (Dolly was euthanized in February 2003 due to complications from premature aging.) Some animal clones develop to an abnormally large size, risking the lives of the surrogate mothers carrying them. The prospect of subjecting preborn children to such genetic malfunctions is so appalling that one expert in mammalian cloning, Mark Westhusin, said that no one who actually has any experience with cloning wants anything to do with human cloning. Scientists may have few qualms about aborting a deformed animal fetus but what would they do with a human in the same condition?

Public outcry followed the early 1960s discovery that giving even one dose of the drug thalidomide to pregnant women (to prevent nausea) caused serious birth defects. One must question if society will tolerate scientists knowingly subjecting preborn children to such horrors. Humans are not objects for laboratory experimentation. If human embryos can be created in a scientific experiment, with the knowledge that abnormalities and deformities will follow, destroying them cannot be far behind.

Cloning violates two values God bestows upon each human being at conception: pricelessness and uniqueness. Human life is priceless, created in the image and likeness of God. Each person is of infinite worth, and each life is sacred.

In procreation, humans participate with God in creating new life. This offspring not only reflects the likeness of the Creator, but also carries the blended DNA of two separate individuals: a mother and a father. Cloning intentionally produces a genetic copy of one existing individual, questioning the uniqueness of the clone. Procreation reveals that God intends us to be unprecedented individuals. Human cloning contradicts this basic truth of our creation by attempting to create man in our own image, rather than in Gods.

Human cloning also rests on the false notion that we reproduce in the same way one manufactures products in a factory. Each life should be viewed as a priceless gift from God and never as a mere industrial product.

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