1. Many ethical thinkers have called for a worldwide ban on all forms of human c
ID: 1254851 • Letter: 1
Question
1. Many ethical thinkers have called for a worldwide ban on all forms of human cloning. Do you agree with the this argument? Could we realistically allow therapeutic cloning but ban human cloning? 3-5 sentences2. What are the ethical questions raised by cloning? And is there any moral difference between applying genetic engineering techniques to humans and applying them to animals or plants? Explain. 3-5 sentences
3.Do you think that we are good only because we are afraid of the consequences of being bad? If we could get away with being bad (say, by becoming invisible), would most people be bad? Or do you agree with Socrates that it is always best to do good, period. 3-5 sentences
Explanation / Answer
1) The Religious Issues That Arise With the Prospect of Human Cloning "Should we clone human beings?" This question sends an electrical charge into our religious sensibilities. It shocks us into theological reflection. It may not be immediately clear what we ought to think, but human cloning is a serious moral issue in need of resolution. Most religious thinkers who recommend public policies on cloning humans propose either a ban or restrictive regulation. Their views differ significantly; not all religions look at human cloning in the same light. Many leaders of several different religious traditions in the U.S. say they are uncomfortable with the idea. Some say that "human cloning is an idea whose time has not come yet." Others say that their community distrusts the science. A recent 16-page report was released by Oregon State University’s Program for Ethics, Science and the Environment. They considered the views of not only Jewish and Christian faith traditions, but also African American, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Islamic and Native American understandings. Native Americans stress the importance of the community over the individual; they believe that individuals exist as members of a specific cultural group. They fear that the narcissistic members of our society would abuse the new technology. A Native American, Abraham Kahikina Akaka, said that the aboriginal people of the world who feel that their "kind" is somewhat of an endangered species may embrace cloning. Being able to clone the best of their race may be a blessing to them. The Orthodox Christian views are that cloning adds a "third party" to the conception of a child. They feel that a cloned child "will not be the product of love, but of scientific procedures." They also question whether or not this new person will have a soul or not. Orthodox Christians also ask "if genetic material from other animals is added to human DNA, would this make the resulting offspring non-human?" Fr. Stanley Samuel Harakas said that "mixing human DNA with animal DNA would be something more than ‘Playing God.’ It would be ‘Playing the Devil.’" Rev. Demetri Demopulos, geneticist and pastor, stated that "Much has been made of cloning humans for medical purposes. This has ranged from making another copy to supply ‘spare parts’ in organ transplantation to creating embryonic cells from mature cells for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease. Neither is a moral option. We cannot store living human beings in an ‘organ bank’ to make withdrawals as we will." Someone else suggested that "If cloning promises to cure genetically carried diseases or even eliminate human hunger, Christians surely could not be opposed." The main issue with the African Americans is "Can we trust the science?" Marian Gray Secundy, professor and director of the Program in Clinical Ethics at Howard University, said that "Ethnic Americans are extraordinarily suspicious and distrustful of any new scientific technologies. This is particularly true for, but not confined to, the African American community. The history of scientific abuse and medical neglect carries with it a legacy that is permanently imprinted on the collective consciousness of these groups." Ronald Y. Nakasone, a Buddhist priest stated "The Buddhist response to the possibility of cloning human beings is not if, but when . . . Would we accord a cloned person the benefits enjoyed by those who are born naturally? I would hope so." Buddhist and Hindu traditions feel that our priorities are out of sync. The editor of Hinduism Today, Acharya Palaniswami, said "Most Hindu spiritual leaders are less concerned for the moral issues and casuistry surrounding human cloning than for the practical need. Why do this, they ask again and again. Will it help us to draw nearer to God if we have such bodies? . . . Will humankind’s inner consciousness be enhanced? They think not." The Hindu leaders applaud President Clinton’s call for a spiritual view on the human cloning predicament; they think it displays his "deep understanding of complex issues which cannot be resolved by science or politics alone." The Islamic perspective, like that of the African Americans, says that society is not ready for this kind of new technology. "The laws and social ethics are too far behind the science." Dr. Maher Hathout stated that "The position of many Muslim scholars is not different than the one adopted by the Vatican. Many of these scholars have missed the point. Research and investigation are part of human nature and they must never be curbed . . . However, the moment this research becomes a commodity to be sold and traded like any other commodity, or used for political and cultural superiority, it is a violation of divine principles serving God and His creation." Rabbi Barry Freundel sees two main questions to human cloning from a Judaic point of view: (1) whether to proceed with cloning technology? and (2) The question of the moral and legal status of a clone. He maintains that "with appropriate safeguards, we should exercise the capacity to go ahead, while raising questions about the ‘upside to cloning’ in terms of its scientific and human rationale." "The Jewish tradition would decisively say that a clone is a human being." Cardinal John O’Connor, Roman Catholic Church Archbishop of New York, described the Catholic perspective: "Roman Catholicism supports all true progress in conventional medicine. It is common in biomedical literature to distinguish ‘negative’ from ‘positive’ genetic engineering. ‘Negative’ genetic engineering ‘cures’ a defect or ‘alleviates’ a pathology. This is the tradition of western medicine and all progress in that tradition is welcome. However, ‘positive’ genetic engineering is the construction and-or manufacture of a higher or better type of human . . . This is not truly therapeutic; it is not genuine medicine; it is not human progress and is not welcome." The Ethical and Moral Issues Surrounding Cloning The greatest moral objection placed on cloning lies in the claim that human beings may be unnecessarily harmed, either during experimentation or by expectations after birth. "John Stuart Mill regarded bringing children into being without the prospect of adequate physical and psychological support as nothing short of a moral crime." Recent polls taken of Americans after Dolly’s announcement showed that two out of every three people find human cloning to be morally unacceptable, while 56% said they would not eat the meat of a cloned animal. President Clinton’s first reaction to Dolly was an ethical review; he would not have seen such urgency if an Intel Corporation announced the production of a new computer chip. "The science of life demands a different response, an acknowledgment of anxiety." "Ethical standards define what ‘ought to be done’ or ‘what ought not be done.’" The ethical considerations of this new technology are rooted in the potential risk to human beings and to the potential human beings. Many fear the possibility of a diminished sense of identity and individuality. There are also concerns about a reduction or destruction of the quality of family life. There are many appeals to human dignity; questions arise when human dignity is threatened. Such questions are like: "whose dignity is attacked and how?"; "Is it the duplication of a large part of the genome that is supposed to constitute the attack on human dignity?"; "If so, we might legitimately ask whether and how the dignity of a natural twin is threatened by the existence of the other twin." There are other ethical questions that arise from this issue, such as: o "If we think that a cloned human being might be troubled by psychological or other problems that would make her or his life less satisfactory than it would be better not to bring that human being into existence." o "Why are we so prepared to say that it is bad for a child like the one just described to come into existence, if we are not prepared to say that it is good for a child with every prospect of a worthwhile life to come into existence?" o "How many people should there be? o "Why assume the worst motives?" I am sure this is only the tip of the iceberg as far as the ethical questions involving cloning goes. We do not yet have the answers to these questions and maybe we never will. It is still taking time to simply formulate the right questions. I personally like what Paul Ramsey has to say about the questions that have been raised: "A man of serious conscience means to say in raising ethical questions that there may be some things that men should never do. The good things men do can be made complete only by the things they refuse to do." 2) On the technical end of things, I suppose I'm a bit surprised at how challenging it has been to clone certain mammals successfully, but getting things to work in the lab is almost always harder than figuring out whether they're possible in theory. I expected, of course, that some would want to try cloning humans and that others would declare that cloning of humans should be completely off limits. But as far as the discussions of the ethics of cloning go, I expected that more people would recognize that many of the ethical worries that flow from cloning were already with us. "People who want their children to be little copies of themselves will get cloned!" There were already people out there, making babies the low-tech way, largely motivated by the hope of having little copies of themselves. Indeed, it's hard not to think that at least some of the time, money, and discomfort people put into high-tech infertility treatments (as opposed to adopting) might be motivated by this kind of desire. Whether or not there's anything wrong with wanting a little copy of yourself, this isn't something we completely escape by prohibiting human cloning. "Cloning will muddy the question of who the clone's parents are!" How do you properly score the contributions of the donor of the eggs whose somatic material is removed, the donor of the DNA that gets put in it, and the driver of the uterus in which the clone gestates? These are reasonable questions -- but nothing we haven't seen before in an age of sperm donors, egg donors, and surrogate mothers. Our existing reproductive technologies had already made "parenthood" a more interesting exercise in classification. "We don't know if cloning could lead to harms down the road to a child born of this technology!" This seems a fair concern. But we didn't know whether in vitro fertilization might have unforseen consequences down the road, either. We don't know which of the genes we transmit to offspring in technologically unaided reproduction might lead to harms. Our knowledge of the future is pretty tentative till the future arrives. It was that way even without cloning on the table. "Clones won't have their own identity!" Tell that to my (identical) twin nieces. Indeed, a clone and the person whose DNA is used to make the clone wouldn't even be gestating at the same time in the same uterus, so they'd have even less in common with each other than your typical set of identical twins. Sharing DNA doesn't make them interchangeable. "Human cloning will lead to an impoverishing of our gene pool, which would be bad." One could make an argument that the heritability mix-and-match that accompanies technologically unaided reproduction is generally a good thing, helping us not to concentrate too many recessive genes for potentially harmful traits in any one individual. This actually seems like a reasonable argument to avoid making human reproductive cloning the norm. But there are all manner of other ways our shared gene pool might be impoverished that would exist even if human cloning never happens. First cousins having babies with each other too many generations in a row could get the job done. So, perhaps, could certain choices in response to prenatal genetic screening (whether in utero or in vitro). Imagine if all prospective parents elected for tall, right handed sons. That could impoverish our genetic diversity right quick, with nary a clone in site. I'm not claiming there aren't legitimate ethical questions we would want to ask if the technical hurdles to human cloning are cleared. (Indeed, Glenn McGee lays out more of them here.) But most of these are ethical questions that were already in our laps. Don't put them all on cloning. 3) For Socrates the key to a virtuous life was knowledge of the GOOD and this links ethics with epistemology. If one knew the Good one would choose it. One always chooses the best of the options available. The question was, what is the Good? What is Best? Virtue would depend on knowledge. Knowledge itself is a virtue but knowledge of the GOOD and of Virtue was necessary for the GOOD Life. The soul must choose the GOOD but only if it knows what it is. Evil is the result of ignorance. The soul chooses what it thinks is the Good but it isn’t the soul has made a mistake! Wrong doing is involuntary. Evil doers must be educated, instructed as to what truly is the GOOD and then they will choose it. Socrates believed that no one does wrong voluntarily. Evil is the result of ignorance. If people knew what was the right thing to do they would do it. We always choose what we think is the best or good for us. So, if someone chooses to do what we think is wrong, then that person made a mistake and must be educated to see the error. They mistook evil for the GOOD. Do you agree? Why or why not? Socrates held that people know that OTHER PEOPLE think that it is wrong but they do not totally agree. The wrong doers think that there is something good in doing the evil act even if it is only good for them. So, they do it. If the wrong doers understood why the act was considered to be wrong they would not do it. They do it because they mistake the evil act for a good act in some way. Given options humans will choose the options that appears to be good for them. When they choose what other people call evil it is because they do not agree. They will continue to do the evil acts unless and until they no longer think of them as good. Socrates theory does NOT claim that people who do wrong do not know that the act is wrong. Socrates theory does NOT claim that people who do wrong do think that it is correct or right to do. The theory is that people who do wrong know that OTHER PEOPLE think that it is wrong but that the wrong doer does not accept that and does not agree because the wrong doer sees some benefit or good result for the wrong doer. As long as the wrong doer continues to see some benefit or good result for the wrong doer then the wrong doer will continue to do the act that is considered wrong by OTHER PEOPLE. When the wrong doer comes to understand and to know why the OTHER PEOPLE think of the act as being wrong and the wrong doer accepts that then the wrong doer will stop doing that act. Person P does act X. Person P knows that OTHER PEOPLE think that act X is WRONG or BAD or EVIL. Person P does X anyway because person P thinks that X is in some way GOOD for P. X is fun or releaves pain or will bring money or power or fame to P. P thinks that X will BENEFIT P. BENE = GOOD and FIT= Make or do. So P thinks that X will in some way make a good for P. Unless and until P stops thinking of X as a GOOD P will continue to do X. P does X because people always choose what they think is on some way good for them. For Socrates the soul always goes to the GOOD. The soul "volunteers" or wills to do the GOOD. So P chooses X out of ignorance of what is truly GOOD as other people see the GOOD as different from X. Further, Socrates held that all virtue is one! Virtue is GOOD. Truth is GOOD. Beauty is GOOD. Knowledge is GOOD. The true, good and beautiful are all GOOD and united in the GOOD as ONE. How was one to teach others what the GOOD is? Socrates sought an answer to that and many other questions. The Sophists claimed to teach but they trained in technique. They dealt with specialized actions. Virtue is not specialized.
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