Is cloning the gateway to the future or the door to disaster? Imagine knowing that the person you have lived with or loved for your entire life was created in a science lab by a man wearing a white overcoat and a pair of plastic goggles. For years, the subject of cloning has captured the imaginations of authors, movie directors, and much more of the human population. Cloning is the prospect of creating a human or animal that is genetically identical to its "parent." In the cloning process, a scientist takes the genetic information of an organism and inserts it into an.
unfertilized egg cell from a member of the same species (MacKinnon, 4). The egg then begins to develop, functioning under the direction of its newly acquired genetic code, and eventually a genetically identical organism is created. (MacKinnon, 4). Yet, the ramifications of cloning do not stop with the creation of duplicate people, but instead are intertwined with the very nature of life itself.
With that in mind, many still think cloning would be useful in the event of having a loved one die because with the use of cloning, you could "recreate" that person and bring them back to life. Although, the unavoidable truth is that they would be producing an entirely different person (Nash, 1). It would be a delayed twin of a child for example. .
In addition, cloning presents an even greater danger. The replication and copying of DNA causes great damage to the genetic code (Nash, 2). For instance, if a sample of DNA is taken from a person to copy, and that person is carrying a code for some sort of disorder, the exact code would then be copied therefore making another human carry that disorder. .
Furthermore, what if in the cloning process you produce someone with two heads and three arms? Are you simply going to euphonize and dispose of that person? The answer is no. We are talking about a human life. Likewise, the potential of physical harm put upon those involved with the process is devastating.
