If religious thought is eliminated from the answer to: Whats evil or bad about cloning human beings? , my question is what is wrong about cloning human beings if this can be done?
Final question: list any benefits as well as liabilities of cloning a human being…the only condition would be to omit anything religious from your answer.
There are hundreds of thousands of human clones all over the world already: they are called monozygotic twins.
A cloned human is still a human: it must be born into a loving, caring family and be free of prejuduce and unnecessary suffering (which the current premature death of animal clones cannot guarantee).
Other than that, I don’t see any particular ethical difficulties beyond those attached to any baby. Does choosing a highly intelligent and athletic sexual partner “pursue a master race”? Can any child not be indoctrinated or abused such that supremacism or severe personality disorders might result?
I wouldn’t call it evil or bad, but it does raise some etichal red flags. I’m not worried about superhumans (clones are genetic copies of ordinary human beings, nothing super about that), and I’m not especially worried about an abundance of mad killers – we seem to be able to produce enough of those the old fashioned way. But I can see very few good reasons for choosing to create a clone instead of going for the usual sperm & egg lottery. Are you making a copy of a dead loved one? A child deserves to be allowed to be him/herself, not born as a replacement copy of someone else. A copy of a celebrity? That gives me strong eeek-wibes. And how will the parents react if their pretty Orlando Bloom-lookalike decides he wants to be a car mechanic instead of going off to Hollywood and earn a lot of money for his parents?
I can imagine some good reasons. Say, if you have a family riddled with serious genetic health problems, and they manage to get a healthy child, it might be tempting – and ethically OK – to repeat the success instead of rolling the dice again. But in most cases, cloning seems more likely to be chosen for reasons unlikely to add to the children’s happiness, to put it mildly. Thus, I’m skeptical. I’d be fine with some kind of screening process to make cloning of human beings legal only if the reason is a sound and medical one.
People have apparently wanted to do that for a long time. Shirley Temple writes in her autobiography that a woman offered her parents thousands of dollars during the Depression to “make her another Shirley.”
I’m with hildea.
Full human cloning (as opposed to, say growing a replacement liver or something like that, has nil or close to nil point, from a religious view, and is likely to lead people into evil actions by trying to force others into a preconceived mold. Cloning is just an idea. Humans, however, are simply not sufficiently wise to use certain forms of it wisely (not that there really is a point to it).
Genetic engineering will do that just fine w/o cloning.
Was Hitler genetically evil? There are easier ways of making a human evil than trying to breed one that way.
Infertile couples could have children with whom they are genetically related. It would be kind of creepy to the parent to your identical twin, but there’s nothing inherently “bad” about it.
The only problem I have with human reproductive cloning is the unacceptably high rate of abnormality observed in other mammalian clones (for human reproductive purposes), coupled with the fact that producing viable primate clones has already proven to be extremely difficult, and so far elusive except up to the blastocyst stage (not counting the results where “normal” primate embryos have been split artificially, analagously to the development of monozygotic twins).
If we can make it as safe and reliable as other medical procedures already applied to assist human reproduction, then, aside from religious concerns, there is no moral issue, in my mind, nor an ethical one, any more than IVF or plastic surgury are ethical issues. Some people are obviously of the oppinion that luxury expenditure is itself immoral; but that issue is so debatable I’m inclined to ignore it.
Cloning raises no new ethical questions that are not already raised by in-vitro fertilization, adoption, identical twins, and normal childbearing.
Could people have cloned children for selfish reasons? Could have have unrealistic expectations for those cloned children? Yes, of course, but we don’t prevent parents with unrealistic expectations or selfish reasons from having normal children, or IVF children, or even adopting. If the parent’s creepiness becomes too overwhelming we already have mechanisms to remove children from unfit parents.
Cloning creates a human child, it does not create a super-human, it does not create a full-grown person, it does not create a copy of a person, it does not create a second-class citizen or subhuman, the clone is not the property of anyone. Slavery was outlawed by the 13th and 14th amendments.
Currently cloning is an experimental procedure, and therefore it would be immoral to clone a human being. When cloning becomes as easy as other IVF procedures, it will not be immoral, any more than IVF is immoral. Of course, some people do believe that IVF is immoral, so if you agree with their postulates then human cloning will be just as immoral. However, I don’t agree that IVF is immoral, so I don’t see any reason for cloning to be immoral.
Well than what the heck is it good for? 
:rolleyes:
One problem if it were widespread (became the dominant form of reproduction) would be a lack of genetic diversity, thus leaving more of the population voulnerable to super-flus etc.
It would also tend to invalidate DNA identification as evidence of guilt. (though it could still indicate innocence). I guess that applies to monozygotic twins though.
I’ll start worrying about that when celibacy becomes popular.
As mentioned there is no worry about clones of Hitler. Identical twins are living clones and if you have ever met a pair of them you quickly realize they are two totally unique people as far as personalities go. Barring a Boys From Brazil kind of scheme I seriously doubt you’d get another Hitler as we knew him out of a thousand Hitler clones (of course some nutcases out there would probably deify a Hitler clone just cuz).
The only potential issue I could see with clones would be to clone yourself for spare parts. Need a new lung or bone marrow or heart or something? Just have a clone or three on standby! The perfect organ donor as far as organ donorship goes. This of course does start to seriously stray into ethical and theological territory. I doubt you’d get society to agree to it if the clone was essentially fully functioning and just kept unconscious but what if you could make a brain dead (or whatever the appropriate term is) clone? That is, do something early on to see to it that no higher functioning brain develops and just leave the parts that run the autonomic parts (breathing, heart, etc.).
The thought of warehouses of spare people lying about gives me the creeps but is it really immoral if the person is and always was brain dead? Because it gives me the creeps I have a knee jerk reaction to want to say yes but if I try to be honest with myself I just do not know.
I think you’re missing the point, which is that some people are leery of cloning because they see it as a necessary step on the path to full genetic engineering.
And I sure hope it is. I don’t want my army of slave clones to be limited to my physical characteristics! They couldn’t whip the armed forces of Costa Rica! 
You won’t be able to grow an army of slave clones because cloning will create human babies. Those babies will need to be gestated in a human womb, raised by human mothers, taught by human teachers, trained by human drill sergeants. How much does it cost to raise a child? Now imagine raising an army of children. Where are you going to get the money? If you want the clones to be your slaves you will need to be the head of state of a country that allows slavery, since if you lived in the US, Canada, Europe, or just about every country in the world, slavery is illegal. If you argue that the wealthy will be able circumvent the law and enslave their clones, why don’t they do that TODAY and enslave people off the street, or enslave children (either theirs or other people’s)?
What is it about clones that make people think that clones are natural targets for slavery? I have sisters who are identical twins. Why doesn’t one of my sisters think she can enslave the other one?
Seriously, what’s up with the clone=slave meme? Where in hell does it come from? I honestly don’t get this.
Clone slaves are grown to maturity in giant phytoamniotic pods, silly!
since one of the definitions of the word soul is the moral or ethical nature of the human being, do you believe that the newly produced human clone would have one?
If so, as monozygotic twins have, then would it be safe to presume that the so-called soul would be just like the master clone or would be like a kalidascopic gene shake?
It’s a popular theme in science fiction. Basically fully grown humans designed and created specifically to serve some particular purpose (that could probably be done more cheaply and efficiently by robots) - laborers, soldiers, whatever. They are essentially “property” of whatever corporation or government created them.
It seems like a tremendous waste of resources to keep an army of clones alive just for the purpose of harvesting body parts, unless maybe you want to only clone people who are genetetically compatible with a large segment of the population (if it even works that way). Most people go their entire lifetime never having to need an organ transplant. Now if they can do brain transplants, I can see creating a clone every 20-30 years or so and living indefinitely.
This is a common misperception. The idea of the soul is correct IMHO, but peple add all sorts of things to it I do not believe important or accurate. You do not “have a soul”. Neither do you “have mass.” (in the matter sense) It is you.
While I’m not willing to state unequivicobly that one soul could not be two bodies, I find the prospect unlikely. In my religion, the clone would be a seperate individual. It seem similar, but is nevertheless its own person. Harming it is a crime moral and otherwise, not self-mutilation.
And that’s just it. While I can’t specifically say I have an objection to cloning, it’s just pointless. You probably can’t get what you want out of it, and aside from getting spare parts, the technology doesn’t seem to lead anywhere.
Right now, maybe not, but who knows what advances the future will bring.
This statement reminds me of that of the head of the patent office in the 1880s. He espoused that the patent office should be closed because nothing new could possibly be invented. He believed that every technological advance possible had already been made.
Likewise, cloning. It may appear to be going nowhere at this moment but the future may bring advances we didn’t even fathom in our wildest dreams.
Are you ignoring the notion of “blood relation” and its importance to some who wish to parent? While I admit society could be better served if people would agree to adopt rather than making heroic efforts to hand down their own genetic material, the latter drive is an entirely natural urge all the same, and hardly “pointless” by any emotional standard. Some people want a child that is “of themselves”. Reproductive cloning might provide the only solution to their problem of procreation. For them, the concept may not be “pointless” at all.