This blog post looks beyond the ethical concerns and identity debates surrounding human cloning to examine its therapeutic potential and value in life sciences.
Twenty years ago, the birth of Dolly the cloned sheep sent shockwaves around the world. Creating a new life form using only somatic cells from an adult organism, not germ cells, was unprecedented. The future of biotechnology looked rosy, and people began to harbor hopes for human cloning. But the joy was short-lived. Dolly suffered from obesity and lung disease, and even showed symptoms of arthritis, raising concerns that she was “aging rapidly.” Ultimately, Dolly was euthanized just six years after her birth, which strengthened the arguments of those opposed to human cloning. So, should human cloning be halted because it is dangerous? I don’t necessarily think so. To explain this, I will first examine the grounds of the anti-cloning advocates.
First, ethical concerns are raised. Article 20 (Prohibition of Human Cloning) in Chapter 4, Section 1 of the ‘Act on Bioethics and Safety’ issued by the Bioethics Policy Division of South Korea’s Ministry of Health and Welfare explicitly states: “No person shall implant a somatic cell-cloned embryo into the uterus of a human or animal, maintain it in an implanted state, or give birth to it.” Furthermore, the film The Island depicts ‘clones’—replicas of actual people—who exist solely for the purpose of harvesting organs for transplantation when needed. They are portrayed as tools, not humans, as ‘products’ incapable of feeling love or pain. Opponents of cloning warn that the future depicted in The Island could become reality, arguing that humans could mass-produce clones for purposes like organ transplantation and use them as tools.
The second issue concerns identity. A person created through cloning may experience psychological turmoil upon learning that an identical being exists. This could lead to an identity crisis centered on the question, ‘Who am I?’
These arguments against cloning have their own valid reasons. However, when examined from ethical and identity perspectives, their basis lacks validity.
First, let’s examine the ethical aspect. Even if large-scale cloning were attempted, implanting the clones would require numerous wombs and surrogate mothers. However, securing wombs is limited, and a surrogate mother would need approximately nine months of pregnancy to give birth to a cloned human. Furthermore, obtaining a large number of eggs requires high costs, and maintaining the cloned humans would also be very expensive. From both a time and cost perspective, mass human cloning is realistically difficult. The image of cloned humans portrayed in current mass media and press is often exaggerated; commercial mass cloning, the kind seen in science fiction films, is unlikely to be achieved in reality. Above all, human cloning is such a controversial issue that strict legal sanctions would be imposed. Therefore, it would not pose a major ethical problem.
Furthermore, the argument that human cloning should be prohibited on identity grounds lacks persuasiveness. If bioethics education is properly upheld, major problems are unlikely. However, current science education places insufficient emphasis on the importance of bioethics education, and there is an absolute shortage of experts qualified to teach it. To address this, bioethics education programs for the general public and for clones could be developed to minimize the psychological confusion human cloning might cause. Through systematic bioethics education, the value of respecting life can be internalized, and identity formation can be promoted.
So, what are the positive aspects of human cloning? There are several, but I believe the greatest advantage is the potential to cure genetic diseases. When one parent carries a genetic disease, there is a risk that disease could be passed on to offspring. While current technology can prevent some genetic diseases using donor sperm or eggs from a third party, the risk of side effects cannot be entirely eliminated when the genetic material does not come from the parents. Human cloning, however, offers the advantage of preventing the transmission of parental genetic diseases to offspring.
Furthermore, through genetic analysis, diseases once considered incurable, such as cancer or AIDS, are shifting toward the concept of intractable diseases. Biotechnologists are making significant contributions to the development of treatments for intractable diseases through human cloning research, utilizing methods like genetic sequencing analysis. This is highly likely to be applied to treating diseases like Alzheimer’s or diabetes as well. Moreover, in the current state of organ transplantation, supply is woefully inadequate compared to demand. In this context, organ replication through human cloning could offer a ray of hope to those in need of transplants. Beyond this, human cloning research also has advantages such as gifting precious life to infertile couples.
We have examined the arguments of those opposing human cloning from ethical and identity perspectives, explaining why these arguments lack validity. We have also discussed the positive aspects of human cloning. This reveals that human cloning is not as dangerous as commonly perceived. Advances in stem cell research have shown humanity the possibility of curing incurable diseases, and an era of average lifespans reaching 100 years is not far off. Science has always ventured into new territory, accepting various opportunity costs. After countless failures, science and technology have advanced; without this trial and error, today’s genetic engineering technology would not exist. The path to human cloning remains long and unfamiliar. However, rather than being trapped by fear of the unknown, we must challenge ourselves to pursue research into human cloning.
