CLONING-STATEMENT FROM THE DANISH COUNCIL OF ETHICS Introduction to the Danish Council of Ethics’ Position
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چکیده
Cloning is asexual reproduction. That means that an individual can be created without the involvement of any egg and sperm cells. Cloning generates a copy of the cloned organism’s genesunlike sexual reproduction, in which the offspring takes one half of its genes from the egg cell and the other half from the sperm cell. The cloning debate arouses intense emotions, which presumably has to do with the fact that cloning strikes at something altogether fundamental, the creation of life. Of course, it can be claimed that people have always been involved in the creation of life when they have children. In recent years, parenting has also taken place with the aid of assisted reproduction, imitating nature’s way of uniting eggs and sperm cells. The latest development is that life can be initiated by means of a so-called somatic cell nuclear transfer from a cell that could never evolve into a new individual of its own accord. The next step may be that researchers come by knowledge that will enable them to make changes to the future individual through genetic engineering. Thus, for the first time, people may be faced with the option of being directly capable of influencing their own evolution. The possibility of cloning gave rise directly to worldwide, yet not undisputed agreement that human cloning should under no circumstances be allowed. However, it turns out that the knowledge about cell specialization to which cloning research has given rise can also be used in other contexts. Other applications of cloning techniques–especially so-called therapeutic cloning–have been suggested, and opinions have now been voiced recommending this use of cloning. Most recently, on 23 january 2001, the British House of Lords finally passed a draft bill to permit some research into human stem cells taken from an embryo —embryonic stem cells— the creation of such stem cells being feasible with the aid of the somatic cell nuclear transfer cloning technique. The ethical dilemmas associated with permitting stem cell research are essentially linked to embryonic stem cells. On the one hand, the embryo could develop into a child, were it to be implanted in a uterus and otherwise enjoy the right conditions. On the other hand, there is foreseeably great therapeutic potential in exploring stem cells and, more particularly, in embryonic stem cells created by cloning techniques. For some, the ethical misgivings attaching to the use of embryos, formed for example by clo261
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