This wednesday I\'m giving a presentation on the topic of \"The ethics of cloning\". I\'m supposed to basically report about my findings and give an opinion of whether I am for or against it.

I\'m against it but only because I don\'t see any benefits and I keep finding articles / sites made by \'naturalists\' or whatever you call them that only give the negative points.

I was wondering what you guys thought about it. Don\'t worry about me using your opinions or quotes in my report. I\'m only supposed to use well cited sources only .

By the way, cloning as in animal cloning where you take cells from an already existing organism and put the DNA into an embyo.

Since everybody helped with my report, I\'ll help with yours!

I personally think that cloning entire organisms is wrong. However with research being done on the possibilities of using human stem cells* I can\'t help but support the research.

Using them would allow us to create not new people, but recreate a part of you. This means that if you where dying of a heart disorder, they could \"grow\" just your heart with out needing to create a whole new organism.

This could eliminate blindness, Cancer, liver failure, and a whole slew of other problems. So yes, I\'m for some of it and against other bits.

*Stem cells are the ones that are present during the earliest developmental stages. They later organize into the other cells that form all other cells, tissues, and organs.

This steps a little bit into the realm of using forbitten technology or something like that. I really don\'t have a name for it but there was this dilemma that came up after World War 2.

Germans had been experimenting (and in the process, torturing) Jews in order to obtain findings about human limitations. They would drown and freeze people to see how long an average person could survive in harsh climates and such. When the war was over, there were all these findings and documents that could help medical science greatly but the problem was that the means that were used to accumulate said data was horrific and many people were against using it since it was like they were promoting the mutilation of millions of Jews. I don\'t remember if they used the information they found or not but it\'s a similar situation with stem cells. Should the stem cells from dead fetuses be used in research?

I want to say that it\'s obvious that we shouldn\'t be wasting resources for sentimental reasons but sometimes it\'s not that simple for some people, especially for the parents of the deceased child.

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Cloning has good benifits and bad benifits.
1. If you wanna make an exact clone of your self, then dont make a clone. They will look the same but sence they are independent, then they will have a personality of there own.
2. It may be good for labor and army people things, but thats still sorta wrong because they may not want to.

Yes, they should use stem cells for scientific purposes. They should keep abortion clinics open, and whenever they get some dead babies, ship em over to the research lab. That\'s my opinion anyways.

But if they can eventually clone stem cells, then they wouldn\'t have to wait for dead babies, and that might be better. I don\'t really care about cloning people and animals (but the cloning animals thing doesn\'t sound all bad, could possibly clone near-extinct species back into existance or something).

A clone of myself would be very strange..

ED: And well, Pocket, if you just go to naturalists sites that give negative points... You\'re only getting one side of the story, and that\'s not exactly going to make a good report now is it? \"Cloning is bad, the end\" wouldn\'t fly in my school, anyway.

[Edited on 8-3-2004 by HollowTorment]

Ah, cloning, the argument of our time. I say that there is very little good to cloning an entire organism. Cloning arms, legs, cells, etc. to replace lost ones is and entitely different matter, if specific limbs can be cloned independently. Otherwise, terrorists could clone themselves to confuse their enemies, and thus escape harm.

I say that cloning should be none in very small measures. We should never go to deep into tinkering with cloning. The further we go, the closer we come to the discovery of cloning a human being, a danger which must never be realized. Sure, we\'d all like to think we could just stop with a replacement arm, leg, liver, or spleen, but it won\'t happen that way. Temptation will eventually win, and we will clone an embryo, then eventually, clone an entire human organism. People will lose their entire identity. People will be able to be found who have the same thumbprint as you. No one will be truly unique, because nothing will be one-of-a-kind. Even if you choose not to be cloned, because there will always be the possibility of you being cloned, your individuality will no longer be sacred. Clones would face discrimination because they are just copies. And in truth, they are. Although we would be smug with the fact that perhaps we no longer needed God, it would never be true, because he provided us the materials and, well, life to create these clones and machines. In fact, it is hard to determine if clones would have souls. Personally, I believe they would not, because they are artificial beings made by man. They would be no different then robots, machines, or toilets. just made by us for our convenience.

No, cloning is not to be excersized or examined. We should utilize it carefully, and stay away from the cloning of embryos.

Human cloning deals with bioethics. Human cloning can have a large number of positive effects, but these benefits have an equal negative side. For example, they were one able to clone replacement organs for a cow; however, they had to allow a baby clone be raise for six months, while it was in the mother womb. Now the question is \"was it right to kill the baby cow to get replacement organs?\" This is one of the major problems of human cloning. When do we as a world decide when it has life? Some people would say when it first started to develop, other would say never. Who are we to say when life begins?

If you ever wonder why we started to research cloning, the reason lies with stem cells. The young stem cell can become nearly any cell in the human body. With stems cell we can repair nerves or organs. But the stem cell can only be harvest after the embryos develop for a while. Who are we to steal their chances at a normal life? The clones can survive and it can live a normal life. The cloning cells may have problems and have defects within the cells. There have been experiments where the cloning had defects. Also companies like Tristem are trying to develop an altermative way. Tristem recently said the have achieve retro differentiation. If so cloning may not be need because retro differentiation changes blood cell back into stem cells. Also Breakman if he should ever develop heart disease the stem cell could technically stop it.

I think it is possible, but we have too many humans in this world. Anymore we will explode.

I don\'t see the point in cloning. I mean, all we ever use it on is sheep. Why sheep?! The last I checked we weren\'t running out.

I wouldent be so sure about the sheep. Have you heard about KFC i mean thats nasty:sick: