Role Playing

Role Playing
A sheep named Dolly was born in 1996, and she was far from ordinary. She was the first sheep to be cloned by a cell of the adult species by a process called nuclear transfer. Though she died at the young age of six from a progressive lung disease, her life sparked heavy debate over the issue of cloning. There are moral/ethical, political, legal, and religious arguments for the prosand cons of this scientific discovery. Scientists have even gone as far as trying to clone humans. Many were afraid that the life expectancy and health of cloned animals or humans were being jeopardized.
A bioethicist and self proclaimed humanist, Leon R. Kass, has vocalized his own opinion on the issue. As a bright doctor of philosophy in Biochemistry and knowledgeable individual in the fieldof science, he also fights to defend human dignity. He began to think philosophically about science and wanted to answer the many moral questions while learning and studying biochemistry. When confronted with the topic of cloning he believed “the programmed reproduction of man will dehumanize him” (Kass 142). Destruction of natural order in family structure, scientific error, dabbing intoforbidden territory, and potential violated rights of the cloned individual will offer support to my belief on the topic of human cloning. An opposing viewpoint will also be used to show its faults. As a proponent to Kass’ beliefs, I agree that human cloning is unethical and has the ability to distort the human race.
Cloning for the purpose of making children could serve a variety of different benefits.It may allow couples who struggle with infertility to be given the opportunity to have children who are genetically related. Cloning could also help with disease prevention if there is a chance a genetic disease could be passed down to children. If a specific patient needs an organ transplant, a cloned child could be created to be a match and donate. Individuals could be “replicated” if theypossess desired characteristics, and those who are dying could be cloned to make a living connection last. Although some of these up sides to cloning may have a positive effect on those living, they starve the opportunity for the unborn to have a say and rely on the decisions and control of the parents. Because there are dangers associated with cloning, the children are at risk and parents should nothave the right to jeopardize the health of an individual they would like to bring into this world. The fault of these arguments is that the well being of the child are not taken into consideration and therefore, less significant or even sufficient (Human Cloning and Human Dignity).
The concept of family structure becomes very cloudy when tainted by the effects of human cloning. The President’scouncil on Bioethics points out that the essence of having children and generational relations become distorted in this context. They argue that because what should be a natural order of passing down between generations, cloning would disrupt this by making fathers an identical twin brother of his son and mothers that give birth to their twin. In this way, grandchildren could be viewed as geneticchildren to their grand parents (xxix). This could potentially cause great tension in families because of this confusion and predicament that goes against natural order. Cloning is really the copy of only one parent and this also has the potential to strain relations in the family, especially when identity issues play a role. However, family relations are not the only concern. Going against thenature of procreation is another unethical aspect of human cloning.
The process of bearing and rearing children is vital to the world’s existence. The sexual component in the process of reproduction is one of the most crucial and central practices among humans. Although usually private, this has a great public meaning by determining family relations, and creating identities and connections between...