The Morality Of Creating Life Essay Research

The Morality Of Creating Life Essay, Research Paper

The Morality of Creating Life

The idea of creating life has intrigued people since the beginning of time. Mary Shelly in her novel Frankenstein brought this idea to life. In this novel, Victor Frankenstein created life by using advanced science and spare body parts. The idea of creating life is a current controversy. Technology now allows for the cloning of sheep. Certainly, the ability to clone humans cannot be far away. It is necessary to place restrictions on cloning research and to ban humans cloning because human cloning is immoral. Furthermore, the expectations placed on a cloned creature by society would be unbearable for the creature, and would lead to its psychological demise.

In the nineteenth century, the idea of creating life was thought to be science fiction. A nineteenth century writing, Mary Shelly’s novel Frankenstein, portrays Victor (the creator) as innocent and the creation as evil at the beginning of the novel. Later, it becomes evident that the monster was not evil when created, rather that the creature was made evil by the surrounding environment. Victor’s immediate response was, as Shelly writes, “Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath” (..). The monster soon understood that he was in fact hideous. Shelly writes, “Knowing social opinion, the monster explained after his agonizing shock of self-discovery, ‘All men hate the wretched’” (..). Whereas the cloning of humans may not produce a being like Victor’s creation, there is little doubt that society may react harshly to this new type of being. The expectations would be enlarged for the creation, which may lead to negative consequences for both the creation and society.

Society would be forever changed once a creature was cloned. Maureen Noelle McLane, author of Literate Species: Populations, “Humanities,” and Frankenstein writes about the drastic impact of the creation on the society in Frankenstein. She writes, “The monster is a problem both for himself and for Victor; more specifically, the monster forces what we might call the psychological re-mapping of the native human world” (967). The drastic changes that society could be forced to deal with could cause problems for the creature, but more so for society. Learning to deal with a being that knows it is the only creature not reproduced sexually would be difficult.

Learning to deal with the creature is not the only problem that society must accept. At the present time, if humans were to be cloned, many lives would be lost perfecting the procedure. John F. Kilner, director of the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity in Bannockburn, Illinois and author of Stop Cloning Around, notes that the cloning of sheep had 277 failed attempts, including the death of some defective clones (10). The idea of having defective human clones dying is quite scary. This fact seems to outweigh the good that could come about from cloning. For example, the cloning of wheat is done to yield more grain and bears no moral ramification. The cloning of humans could also lessen the uniqueness of humans. As Kilner notes, “.human beings, made in the image of God, have a God-given dignity that prevents us from regarding other people merely as means to fulfill our desires” (10). Also, one must wonder who are the true parents of this creation. If it is produced in a laboratory, is it then the doctors who cloned the creation, the donor of the cell, or other people involved in the procedure. Many adopted children are forced to deal with this question. This sense of wondering makes life unbearable for some adopted children and adults.

The theory of cloning a particular individual who was of great benefit to society to allow them to continue their greatness for another generation is ill founded. For instance, if Mother Teresa were cloned, the environment of her community would decide her personality. If she was raised in a family with no religious ties, there is a good chance that she may not be the Mother Teresa that society would expect. Another problem of cloning famous people, lost loved ones, or friends are the unfair expectations placed upon that person. If technology was furthered to the point where dead cells could be cloned, a parent could clone the dead child to “replace” them. The problem with this is that the cloned child would have unfair expectations to be the same as the dead child, or possibly better. Time distorts perceptions of the past.

The morality issues that cloning has presented have been addressed by President Clinton. RNS, writer of the article Clinton urges ban on cloning of humans, reports that President Clinton, at a White House ceremony where he accepted the report of the National Bioethics Commission, stated, “What the legislation will do is to reaffirm our most cherished beliefs about the miracle of human life and the God-given individuality each person possesses” (583). Clinton is responding to the legislation that would ban human cloning but allow continued research. This statement was in reply to Scottish researchers who had successfully cloned a sheep, making the cloning of a human more imminent. Backers of President Clinton included Gracie Hsu, an analyst with the Family Research Council. She opposed the idea to allow cloning research to continue in order to possibly aid the sick. She stated that the panel’s