Ethics of human cloning
On February 23, 1997, news traveled around the world that scientists in Scotland had successfully cloned an adult sheep. What had previously seemed impossible, even to many scientists, was suddenly a reality. The sheep, named Dolly, had only one biological parent and possessed a genetic code identical to that of her original parent. Within days, the public's amazement over this development turned to questions of whether the technology that had produced Dolly could also be used to clone human beings. President Bill Clinton declared a moratorium on federal funding for human cloning research and appointed a commission to review the legal and ethical issues associated with the cloning of humans. More than three years later, there is still uncertainty about whether it will ever be possible to safely clone human beings. The scientists who cloned Dolly succeeded only once in a project involving the creation of 278 sheep embryos. The possibility of deformities and health risks in human children, as well as overwhelming public oppositi
The most contentious and difficult questions associated with human cloning are moral and religious in nature. Religious scholars from a wide range of faith traditions have contributed to a literature on the ethics of human cloning that is sizable, substantive and remarkably diverse. In 1997, President Clinton issued an executive order declaring a five-year moratorium on federal funding related to human cloning. Theological and ecclesiastical positions exhibit the pluralism characteristic of American religiosity. " Such research has been the subject of fierce debate in the U. The Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2001" was passed by the House of Representatives on July 31, 2001 and will now go to the Senate for consideration. "Any discovery that touches upon the human creation is not simply a matter of scientific inquiry," President Clinton said in an Oval Office ceremony. " For example, there has been significant disagreement over the status of human embryos created by cloning for therapeutic research. " Status Earlier this year, Britain became the first country to legalize the creation of cloned human embryos when the House of Lords approved a change to government regulations that would allow stem-cell research, but not "reproductive cloning. Religious Perspectives on Cloning Medical and technical considerations are certainly not the only concerns surrounding the possibility of human cloning. Campbell writes in "Religious Perspectives on Human Cloning," a paper commissioned by the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, "There is no monolithic religious perspective on human cloning. Before voting on passage of the full measure, the House rejected an amendment favored by those who would allow the creation of embryos for the purpose of "therapeutic research. Jewish law, on the other hand, does not attribute full moral status to the human embryo, and Islamic scholarship is divided on the question.
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