Cloning

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Cloning

The news of the successful cloning of an adult sheep-in
which the sheep's DNA was inserted into an unfertilized sheep
egg to produce a lamb with identical DNA-has generated an
outpouring of ethical concerns. These concerns are not about
Dolly, the now famous sheep, nor even about the considerable
impact cloning may have on the animal breeding industry, but
rather about the possibility of cloning humans. For the most
part, however, the ethical concerns being raised are exaggerated
and misplaced, because they are based on inaccurate views about
what genes are and what they can do. The danger, therefore, lies
not in the power of the technology, but in the
misunderstanding of its significance.
Producing a clone of a human being would not amount to
creating a carbon copy-an automaton of the sort familiar from
science fiction. It would be more like producing a delayed
identical twin. And just as identical twins are two separate
people-biologically, psychologically, morally and legally,
though not genetically so a clone is a separate person from his
or her non-contemporaneous twin. To think otherwise is to
embrace a belief in genetic determinism-the view that genes
determine everything about us, and that environmental factors or
the random events in human development are utterly
insignificant. The overwhelming consensus among geneticists is
that genetic determinism is false.
As geneticists have come to understand the ways in which
genes operate, they have also become aware of the myriad ways in
which the environment affects their expression. The genetic
contribution to the simplest physical traits, such as height and
hair color, is significantly mediated by environmental factors.
And the genetic contribution to the traits we value most deeply,
from intelligence to compassion, is conceded by even the most
enthusiastic genetic researchers to be limited and indirect.
Indeed, we need only appeal to our ordinary experience with
identical twins-that they are different people despite their
similarities-to appreciate that genetic determinism is false.
Furthermore, because of the extra steps involved, cloning
will probably always be riskier that is less likely to result in
a live birth-than in vitro fertilization (IVF) and embryo
transfer. (It took more than 275 attempts before the researchers
were able to obtain a successful sheep clone. While cloning
methods may improve, we should note that even standard IVF
techniques ty...

The complete article is about 1636 words and 6.54 pages long.

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