For the past few years, there has been heated controversy on the topic of cloning human beings. Some people claim that human cloning is like "playing God"; others insist that it is a breakthrough in the scientific field. I looked at this issue from the ethical side. These are some inferences I have made:

From one side, cloning is beneficial for society, because clones might compensate the loss of someone you loved. That’s mean, clones could help people to cope with their grief. For example, parents could clone their child who passed away. Besides, when innocent person is unfairly murdered there is no justice for him. But if we could clone humans, the people who were killed in murders, or car accidents could be "brought back to life" in a sense. The people in these accidents and acts of violence didn't do anything to cut their life short. With cloning they would be given the chance to live again.

On the other hand, by cloning somebody, you don't come up with the same person. Of course, human clones would be identical insofar as they would have the same nuclear genes as the donor. However, as observed in natural twins, having identical genes does not result in two indistinguishable individuals. Because of the different environment and circumstances, a clone might be a different person from the person it was cloned from. A dear person that is lost won't come back! The fact that the person does die remains and we can't deny it. Clone would be only a precise copy of someone’s appearance. However, his character wouldn’t resemble behavior of the cloned person. It would not have the same memory or the same way of acting and dealing with problems. That’s mean, since environment has a profound influence on development, human clones likely would be different in terms of personality and other characteristics. The same reasoning applies to recreating sports stars, dictators, and geniuses— genetics does not wholly define a person. Moreover, it would have negative influence on the clone itself. Everybody would expect from it to be like the person that it was cloned from. So it would be a moral pressure on the clone.

Another underlying problem is that clones could be denied the same rights as their individuals in society. There are a lot of films about armies of clones, where clones are treated in a rude way as if they were artificial creatures. This fact proves that society is not prepared for "clones’ era”. Most of people would not accept clone as a normal person. It could cause violation of humans’ right and lead to discrimination.

Another conception is that cloning could be solution to the problems of women who have reproducing trouble. Infertile parents could have their own child, who would have their gens.

However, if cloning is practiced as remedy for infertility there would not need to adopt anybody’s child from foster house. As a result, quantity of homeless and alone children, who have already been brought into this world, would increase. Besides, children’s cloning could turn children into "products of human’s will and design.”

Cloning would also have mental impact on whole society. If human cloning is possible, human’s life wouldn’t be valued at all. People would utter change their notions about safety and danger; they would not assess their lives as the most valuable thing. Besides, cloning could also make social inequality acuter, because cloning would be expensive and only wealthy people could afford it.

Human cloning raises a variety of concerns. It would be irresponsible to use the gains of the new technology without preliminary discussion of the possible harms and benefits of cloning human beings. Until the benefits of human cloning outweigh the harms, it would be inappropriate for physicians to participate in human cloning.

And what is your opinion?