• Question: Why is it so wrong to clone? For example, if we could clone important and clever people, like Albert Einstein, wouldn't it be a good thing?

    Asked by raushan to Amy, Drew, Julia, Kimberley, Sara on 15 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by bradleyfox911.
    • Photo: Drew Rae

      Drew Rae answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      I don’t think that it is wrong to clone, but it is an area where we have to be very careful. We have decided as a society that you can’t experiment on people without their consent. If you start experiments with cloning people, then the moment you partially succeed, you’ve got a person that you are experimenting on, and they didn’t agree to it.

      It’s a good question though. There’s a lot of things where people instinctively say “it’s wrong!” or “it’s a complex moral question!” but once you think about it, these are personal beliefs rather than universal ones. Creating humans is not itself a universal ethical problem – lots of people do it lots of the time. It’s the experimenting on humans part of cloning that we get worried about. Lots of bad things have been done in the name of “science” that involved experimenting on humans against their will.

    • Photo: Sara Imari Walker

      Sara Imari Walker answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      Hi raushan! Great chat, that was really fun! I think that it is not necessarily that it is wrong to clone. Cloning is actually a natural process – some organisms like bacteria naturally make their own clones. And agriculturists have been cloning plants for a very long time. But there are certainly ethical issues we must consider before undertaking human cloning. For one a lot of religions have concerns about cloning. There thinking is usually that a divine being has made each person unique for a reason and messing with that is messing with something sacred. Beyond that there are some valid concerns about how one would treat clones. Are clones considered people? Could clones be used for farming organs for sick people? What about overpopulation? What if clones overtake the “normal” human population? Of course a clone is still a person, but these are valid concerns scientific ethics committees must address before legalizing human cloning.

      I personally do not think cloning a person is wrong. You are essentially making a new person (same way normal babies are made) that may be identical genetically to someone else. But they are not that person. They will be shaped by their own experiences and will grow into an adult that may be very different than the one they were cloned from. From this perspective cloning is not much different from artificial insemination. The distinction is that you are using a preset genetic makeup from a previously living person in the case of cloning, and getting a randomized new set in the case of artificial insemination.

    • Photo: Kimberley Bryon

      Kimberley Bryon answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      Hi again raushan, it was nice talking to you earlier.

      Cloning is a hotly debated issue at the moment, I am guessing that you are talking about human cloning rather than GM food.

      I can see why people would think that cloning could be a great idea. The example you give of Einstein is an interesting one, what if he had been able to carry on his life’s work. How much ore advanced would we be now? It could also be used to help give people with fertility problems a baby, or replace your favourite pet.

      There are two problems with this approach however. The first is to do with ageing. When Dolly the sheep was cloned she aged abnormally, appearing much older than a sheep of her age. This is because the cell she was cloned from was older than a newborn so she aged abnormally.

      The second problem is to do with how people develop. Intelligence is a mixture of environment and genetics, just like personality and appearance. Even if we cloned Albert Einstein he wouldn’t look exactly like Einstein and he may not be as clever.

      Another problem is to do with ethics, how would society view clones? Would people be created to serve as organ donors for their “original”, would the clones be treated the same as people who were conceived naturally? We don’t know the answers to the questions and it is difficult to predict how society would react if there was a clone living amongst us.

      Feel free to ask more questions about this. It is a highly debated topic. 🙂

    • Photo: Amy MacQueen

      Amy MacQueen answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      Hi raushan! Good question! This is a hotly debated topic! It really does depend on where you get your moral values from – which raises a whole lot of other issues…like what really is ethics? is there something inside us that tells us right and wrong? is this common across humanity? what is our conscience? do we have one and where did it come from?

      I actually use “cloning” in my work as far as putting a gene into another organism (bacteria) to make a product is concerned…i.e. genetic engineering, but I do think that it would be wrong to clone a whole human being, regardless of who they were. How would we choose who were good people to clone? would clones be seen as some sub-human type?

      I think one of the great things about us is that we are all different – why would we want to clone anyone anyway? if its to use their organs for a sick sibling etc is that ethical? how do you determine your ethics? good things to think about!! keep thinking!

      🙂

    • Photo: Julia Griffen

      Julia Griffen answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      I think ethics play a big role in cloning, and you have to begin to think is science having too big an effect over nature?

      What do you think of cloning, the other scientists have given some cracking points, so I dont think i need to go inot loads of detail…

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