Therapeutic cloning (moral, Kingdom, blood, hell, America)

[Rex]

Should this type of cloning be allowed? The cloning of organs and such?

[Green Gaia]

I think so. Why not?

[Hirohito18200]

There are better and more practical ways of getting organs, though. They can be produced on their own in 'organ farms' and such. And don't you think the clone would would feel a little slighted?

[rocio]

what those shinto religion thinks about therapeutic cloning

[angellous_evangellous]

I have heard that they will be able to grow organs alone... it's not that they want to clone humans and take organs out of a human body. We are pretty far away from the ability to do either, though. I have no problem with human cloning for growing organs. However, I can't see this process ever becoming practical and inexpensive enough for the people who really need it. Organ donation will be the best bet for several years.

[michel]

British researchers to clone human stem cells to study motor neurone disease



London Zosia Kmietowicz





The British research team that created Dolly the sheep has been granted a licence to clone human embryos to study motor neurone disease.

The licence will allow researchers at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh and King’s College in London to generate stem cell lines from embryos created using DNA from patients with motor neurone disease. They will focus on uncovering the cause of the motor neurone disease in patients whose condition cannot be linked to the genes already identified as causing the disease.

It is only the second time that the United Kingdom’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority has granted a licence for therapeutic cloning. The first licence was granted last year to the Newcastle Centre for Life, where researches will use the stem cells they generate to research diabetes, among other diseases (BMJ 2004;329:417).

Surely this can only lead to 'good' - as long as the right authorities keep an 'eye' on them ?

[michel]

I found this interesting article that 'slots in nicely' into this thread

Designer babies - the ethical debate
A boy has been born to a British couple who want to use stem cells from his umbilical cord to treat an older brother with a life threatening blood disorder.Michelle and Jayson Whitaker's baby, Jamie, was genetically selected while he was still an embryo to be a near perfect match to four-year-old Charlie. The couple went to an American clinic for test tube baby treatment because the selection procedure is not allowed in the UK.

Is it right to select the traits of our children? Is there a difference between screening for genes and directly engineering them into our children?Genetic engineering is a subject for debate througthout the world and especially for religious communities where faith experts apply ancient laws and principals to cutting edge science.
It's also a painful subject for the Jewish community, not just because of the suffering of individuals, but because false genetic and eugenic arguments were used to justify the Holocaust in which over 6 million Jews were murdered.

The Ethical Problems
It sounds a brilliant way of saving a child's life, doesn't it? Not everyone agrees - many people say that this process is unethical, and the start of a slippery slope that leads to human cloning.
One problem can be dismissed at once is the worry that the new baby will be subject to hurtful medical procedures; it won't. The cells required are taken from the umbilical cord, and nothing is done to the baby itself.
So what else upsets people?:-It treats the new baby as a commodity.
The question to be asked is "Is this a wanted child or is it a child that's only being made to be a donor to its older brother? If it was the latter, then the baby would be being treated as a commodity.
To see how wrong that would be let's invent an extreme case: If a child was being created just to provide a cure and was going to be sent off for adoption after the treatment was complete, that would clearly be very wrong.But in this case the child is clearly going to be a much loved member of the family. The new baby will be loved for its own sake, and the special techniques being used are being used to bring additional benefits from the birth.
If the new baby can't provide suitable cells for the treatment the parents will be disappointed that there won't be a cure, they won't be disappointed in their new child.
So in this case (and in any case that would get HFEA permission) there is no risk of the baby being seen as a commodity.And consider this too: Parents often have mixed motives for having a child - maybe they want to provide company for an existing child, or to improve their own relationship, or satisfy the in-laws, and while we might raise an eyebrow we wouldn't say that their action was morally wrong.

It's Murder
Most people who oppose abortion do so because it involves, in their view, killing a person. They believe that this technique too inevitably kills people and that this outweighs any benefits there might be.During the process a number of embryos will be tested to see if they are suitable.Some embryos will be not be suitable. They will be disposed of.
Pro-life people believe that human life begins the moment the sperm fertilises the egg. This means that every unsuitable embryo that is disposed of is a person who is killed.
To put it in an extreme way: each fertilised embryo will be assessed by the scientists. It will only be allowed to live if it is a good match; if it is a bad match it will be denied its right to life.
If you believe that life begins at conception, then this argument is conclusive, and the technique is morally wrong.
If you don't believe that life begins at conception then this argument has no weight and you can move on to look at other arguments.

It's a Slippery Slope.
Next stop real designer babies - chosen for eye colour, or intelligence or some other parental whim.This procedure is very expensive, and very gruelling on the parents involved. It's hard to imagine anyone willingly going through it for fun.
And even if they did, they would never get permission from the HFEA to use the procedure frivolously.
However this could become a worry in a country where regulation of such techniques is less rigorous.
I believe that life does start at conception; how do you all feel ?

[almifkhar]

i think no cloning should be alowed because we humans have the tendency of doing bad thing to others for reasons of greed.