Human Cloning

We will need to define some terms. I have included these at the end of my opening argument. Basically, WE ARE NOT READY TO ALLOW HUMAN CLONING Human cloning has many opponents from many different backgrounds. 1. Legal problems with human cloning A. Who owns the clone? B. Who is responsible for them before they come to age of majority? C. At what age does life begin? (Be prepared for strong backlash from "Pro Choice" activists) D. Are these people citizens or property or pets? E. Is the death of a clone in a lab an act of murder, manslaughter or negligent homicide? F. What legal protection do researchers have from the "parents" G. Are there legal protections for my cell line? There are legal problems that we will not soon overcome. 2. Scientific problems with human cloning A. Cloning of higher mammals has a high failure rate. B. Attempts to clone complete human will result many deaths. C. Do we need to regulate who we allow to donate tissues? D. Human experimentation currently requires informed consent. - Who can give this? E. Our goal should be to improve life. At what cost to the people who are failed experiments? F. Cloned creatures have short life spans and many health and genetic problems. We are not ready to move forward in human cloning until we have answered these questions. 3. Morality problems in human cloning. A. There are too many to list - I assume we don"t want to spend too much time here. B. If my opponent wants to discuss moral/ethical issues it will greatly expand the debate. 4. Social problems with human cloning A. Children of divorce and single parent homes have a host of social problems. B. Single parent families are a huge drain on our social welfare system C. Children of divorce and single parent families fill our prison system. We do not want to increase these numbers. I want to define a few terms and see if Max will agree to use them. Human Cloning - research and attempt to make a living human through cloning technology Cell line cloning - Using cloning techniques to produce genetically identical cells. There are two most effective techniques of cloning Cell mass division - Splitting embryos into smaller cell masses in the earliest stages of growth. - first used on human embryos in Oct 1993. Jerry Hall and Robert Stillman cloned human embryos by splitting early two- to eight-cell embryos into single embryo cells. Nuclear substitution - Removing the nucleus from an egg cell and replacing it with a cell from another individual - Dolly the sheep - Feb 27, 1977 in the journal Nature I also want to respond to Max"s opening thoughts. 1. A Great Advance In Science Great advances in science are usually worked out in socially acceptable ways. It was socially acceptable to detonate nuclear bombs in the desert but not in cities. Boundaries keep popular support (and money) for science. At this point we need to perfect the science on animals. Max says "great advances have been cut down because Human Cloning has never been legalised. " This is not correct. Various governments made specific research on human cloning and human cell lines illegal because it would cause far more problems and produce few useful results. Funding is cut off for many types of research because we believe it will do harm. 2. 'Perfect Humans' Improving the species by genetic manipulation is an interesting idea. The most effective way to do this (Eugenics) is by letting the inferior die (or at least keeping them from breeding). Current science does not do so well. Dolly was the one that lived out of 277 failed attempts. These failed attempts are not pretty. Clones tend to have short life spans and many problems. This is good fiction, bat bad science. WE ARE NOT READY FOR THIS 3. 'Bringing back the dead' Human clones, at best, have the same genetic material. A clone would be a unique person. They might look the same, but would be completely different. This is not a real goal to serious researchers. WE ARE NOT READY FOR THIS some good reading . . . "Goodbye Dolly? " The ethics of human cloning John Harris The Institute ofMedicine, Law and Bioethics, University ofManchester Journal of Medical Ethics 1997; 23: 353-360 . http://jme.bmj.com... 27 Hofstra L. Rev. 557 (1998-1999) Human Cloning: Brave New Mistake; Kolehmainen, Sophia . http://heinonline.org...