Ethics Finder

Human Cloning

Human cloning occurs naturally as in the case of monozygotic twinning where a single fertilized egg (zygote) splits to produce two genetically identical individuals. The process of artificial human cloning would involve the technique of somatic cell nuclear transplant (SCNT), taking an egg cell, removing its genetic material and implanting into it the nucleus of a body cell from the donor. The resulting entity has only one parent (the donor) and is genetically identical to it. There are two purposes for which this technique might be used. First, therapeutic cloning to produce an embryo that is then destroyed harvesting stem cells from it for use in and second, reproductive cloning to implant it in a host womb and bring it to term. The technique and the purposes to which it is put raise a number of moral questions. Eggs for the process are produced either by induced superovulation and/or bought from young women in poorer countries. The first involves physical risks, the second questions of instrumentalization and exploitation. In some case the donor somatic cell is taken from aborted foetuses, and the termination of the cloned embryo is itself a case of abortion. The use of surrogate mother’s is open to similar objects to the acquisition of eggs, and the use of cloning to acquire better quality babies is or tends towards the commodification of human life. From a utilitarian perspective, however, these and other practices are justified by the principle of the greatest happiness of the greatest number. While there have been several claims to have cloned human beings there is no confirmatory evidence of this yet having taken place.

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