Is cloning animals ethical?
Animal cloning is when an exact copy of one animal called a donor, is created
by transferring its DNA
into the empty egg cell of another animal,
and then implanting this egg cell into a surrogate where it grows and is finally born.
Ethics is the study of what is morally right and wrong,
so to rephrase the title of the video, what we’re finding out today is how morally right
or wrong animal cloning is.
Before we decide whether animal cloning is right or wrong, we need to look at it’s
pros and cons
to animals first,
and then humans.
Then, in the conclusion we’ll be able to weigh up the pros and cons of animal cloning
for animals and humans and decide whether it is morally right or wrong.
If you haven’t seen it I recommend you watch my previous video on animal testing, which
discusses a similar topic to this,
and don’t forget to hit the subscribe button and like this video for more great content.
Let’s get to it
Animal cloning is a new and experimental practice still in its infancy.
Because of this, it offers many potential benefits to animals as long as we keep going
with it.
For example, animal cloning allows us to create exact copies of certain animals
which could help us preserve endangered species like pandas and tigers.
It also allows us to recreate animals with desirable traits like guide dogs for the blind
and sniffer dogs,
as well as animals doing less essential jobs like racehorses.
There is also the potential for animal cloning to be used to help restore lost species,
like the wooly mammoth
and maybe even dinosaurs.
Recently, the cloning of dead pets has also started.
Of course, there are downsides to cloning animals on animals.
Take this last point about the cloning of dead pets.
It arguably objectifies the animals, treating them like a commodity that can be brought
back to life as long as somebody's willing to pay.
Furthermore, the cloning of pets simply increases the number of strays being euthanised,
as families that could have taken them in choose to bring back their dead pets instead.
It’s also important to underline the amount of waste that occurs when animals are cloned,
for example, before dolly the sheep was the first mammal to be cloned,
there were 277 failed attempts and multiple miscarriages, meaning 276 eggs were wasted.
Furthermore, dolly, like many cloned animals, lived a shortened life,
many have argued because she was cloned from a 6 year old sheep.
Many other clones are also born with physiological disabilities.
Or maybe animal cloning is worth it in the long run because of the benefits it has to
humans.
for example, The process of cloning animals involves manipulating the DNA of both the
donor cell and the egg cell, which helps us learn more about DNA as a whole.
This could help us learn how to eradicate diseases such as age related ones, like dementia
and certain cancers.
The cloning process also creates stem cells,
which are cells that can be used to grow new organs like hearts and spine tissue.x
Also, the cloned animal can be directly compared against the donor,
which allows us to use them for experiments on different drugs that can be used to help
humans.
Or maybe animal cloning is not worth it because of the suffering it brings on animals in these
experiments.
Also, it’s arguably a slippery slope to human cloning, which holds many more moral
problems.
Who decides who should be cloned?
Does the donor have some sort of ownership over the clone?
Many argue that human cloning would be an example of us ‘playing God’ deciding who
lives and who dies
and the number of destroyed eggs associated with cloning underlines this as a significant
segment of the population see them as being alive.
Human cloning also risks the creation of ‘designer babies’.
A designer baby is when fertilised eggs, or embryos have their dna manipulated or selected
to remove genes associated with certain diseases
and select or insert genes associated with certain traits or characteristics.
No more down syndrome,
every baby born genetically predisposed to succeed in a certain field, is this what the
future holds?
In conclusion it seems that animal cloning can be represented as morally ethical, depending
on whether you can accept two factors.
Firstly it depends on whether or not you can accept the waste of animal life it necessitates
in terms of destroyed eggs, etc
in order to gain the benefits
Secondly it depends on whether you are able to accept the risks of humans being cloned
next, and all the moral connotations of that.
If you can’t, then you must oppose animal cloning, as these two factors,
waste and scientists making overtures towards cloning humans, are a necessary consequence
of it.
That’s animal cloning, please like, share and definitely subscribe!