There are situations where cloning of organisms can be done, but the technology for
cloning is not currently in a place where someone can safely use stem cell treatments on people
let alone creating new living organisms with cloned blastocysts. An individual may support the
cloning of an organism if this cloning could allow someone who has died to come back to life
essentially. Cloning is done with a process that is also used for stem cells named nuclear transfer
(“Understanding Stem Cells”, n.d.). Nuclear transfer involves inserting the nucleus of an already
differentiated adult cell into a donated egg that has had its nucleus removed (“Understanding
Stem Cells”, n.d.). The egg contains genetic material that is then stimulated to form a blastocyst
that can then be implanted into the womb of an organism (“Understanding Stem Cells”, n.d.).
Nuclear transfer can be used to carry the genetic material of one person to full term
hypothetically, but the National Academies press stated that human reproductive cloning should
not be practiced since it is dangerous and likely to fail (“Understanding Stem Cells”, n.d.).
This high risk for cloning would cause one to oppose the cloning of an organism. At
least 95% of cloning on mammals have resulted in failures from miscarriages, life-threatening
anomalies, and stillbirths (“Reproductive Cloning Arguments”, n.d.). Especially since there have
not been many clinical trials regarding the process of reproductive cloning, the people who bear
the clones alongside the clones put themselves at grave risk of death or great harm
(“Reproductive Cloning Arguments”, n.d.). Even if hypothetically cloning techniques were
perfected in mammals and suitable at the other end of human trials, I would not consider the
creation of savior siblings to be ethical (“Reproductive Cloning Arguments”, n.d.).
Savior siblings are the creation of a reproductive clone to provide biological materials to
a fatally ill sibling (“Ethical, Legal and Societal Implications”, n.d.). I would go by fairness or
justice approach to come to my decision which states that equals should be treated equally, and
favoritism and discrimination would be unjust and wrong (Murphee, n.d.). Savior siblings would
have embryos carry more burdens than benefits, and this disproportionate amount of burdens on
the embryo would have me consider savior siblings unethical (“Ethical, Legal and Societal
Implications”, n.d.). I would also apply the fairness or justice approach to not supporting the
cloning of a companion animal that passed away. A primary example of reproductive cloning
being done is through Barbara Streisand having her dog Samantha cloned twice to have her dog
supposedly come back to life through a genetic clone of a dog.
There is a disproportionate amount of failure for cloning in dogs, and a case in a South
Korean laboratory churned out more than 600 cloned dogs with the process only working around
33-40% of the time (“Here’s Exactly What’s Wrong with Barbara Streisand Cloning Her Dogs”,
2018). Many blastocysts are wasted in place for a dog that is not even the same as the one the
dog was cloned from. The dog that is cloned may appear the same as the original dog, but the
cloned dog will most likely have completely different behaviors and personality from the original
(“Here’s Exactly What’s Wrong with Barbara Streisand Cloning Her Dogs”, 2018). The cloned
dog will have expectations placed onto it to be the same as the original dog that are imposed due
to bias from being a genetic match (Hecht, 2015). These expectations are put onto the dogs
unjustly and would prevent the fair treatment of the animal when comparison to dogs that were
not cloned.
I would say that it is not a good thing to resurrect species through reproductive cloning
due to Beth Shapiro’s pragmatic approach to consider whether the wooly mammoth should be
cloned. The ethical approach I used to come to this conclusion is the Common-Good Approach
which assumes a society comprises individuals whose own good is linked to the community
(Murphee, n.d.). Wooly mammoth DNA can be reconstructed to be complete at Harvard scientist
George Church’s lab since the mammoth samples collected are so old, its DNA is damaged
(Shapiro, 2015). However, even if Church’s lab successfully creates a clone of a wooly
mammoth, and there would happen to be enough genetic diversity for the mammoth to survive
over the course of generations, the effects of the mammoth would not be able to be predicted
when introduced into a new environment (Shapiro, 2015). The modern environment has changed
considerably, and the wooly mammoth could potentially be slotted back into this environment if
it is able to adapt (Shapiro, 2015). There is the potential of wooly mammoths being an invasive
species in the new environment since there have been new herbivores that have taken the place
of the mammoths since the time mammoths had not been extinct (Shapiro, 2015). Being an
invasive species would cause more harm than good to the community and ecosystem it is a part
of.
Egg donation is ethically problematic in the term of a doctor’s duty to not harm because
of the sense that doctors are offering women the choice to undergo a procedure that may inflict
harm and not give any clinical benefit (Dickenson, 2015). The risk is given by patients
undergoing three risk-laden stages to surgically remove extracting eggs (Dickenson, 2015).
Particularly in the second stage, overstimulating the ovaries can cause sever fluid retention with
a potentially fatal outcome (Dickenson, 2015). Also, egg providers have no guidelines on what
must be told in consent forms (Dickenson, 2015). Egg donors could be put at high risk of death
without being told so altogether in consent forms (Dickenson, 2015). Also, there cannot be any
information of long-term consequences to the treatments since research is so sparse (Woodruff,
2017).
I would say women who undergo this high-risk treatment cannot be properly
compensated with the amount that is commonly given for egg donation, $5000 to $10,000
(Woodruff, 2017). The long road of harm to the egg donors can prevent them from surviving on
the other side of receiving monetary compensation (Woodruff, 2017). Also, the story of Janneke
Parish would prevent me from letting a family member donate eggs. Parrish at the midst of
preparatory blood test was told at the third time she donated eggs that her hormone levels were
lower than the woman interested in receiving Parrish’s eggs (Woodruff, 2017). She was infertile,
and she could not be warned of the long-term consequence of being infertile in her consent form
(Woodruff, 2017). I would not want my family member who donates eggs to randomly be
infertile or die due to complications in a treatment that would most likely not benefit them or
other people if the eggs are not used to benefit anyone, for example.
Works Cited
Dickenson, Donna. (2015). The Commercialization of Human Eggs in Mitochondrial
Replacement Research. Routledge.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1179/2050287713Z.00000000018
Ethical, Legal, and Societal Implications of Biotechnology. (n.d.). JMU.
https://sites.lib.jmu.edu/elsi-biotech/reproductive-biotechnology/savior-siblings-and-
cloning/
Hecht, Julie. (2015). Yes You can clone your dog, but would you want to?. Scientific American.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/dog-spies/yes-you-can-clone-your-dog-but-would-
you-want-to/
Here’s Exactly What’s Wrong with Barbara Streisand Cloning Her Dogs. (2018). PETA Prime.
https://prime.peta.org/news/heres-exactly-whats-wrong-with-barbra-streisand-cloning-
her-dogs/
Murphee, Julie. (n.d.). A Framework for Ethical Decision Making. ASU.
https://asu.instructure.com/courses/129890/modules/items/8930465
Reproductive Cloning Arguments Pro and Con. (n.d.). newsonline.
https://www.geneticsandsociety.org/internal-content/reproductive-cloning-arguments-
pro-and-con
Shapiro, Beth. (2015). How to Clone a Mammoth: The Science of De-Extinction. The Royal
Institution. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO043PSBnKU
Understanding Stem Cells: An Overview of the Science and Issues from the National Academies.
(n.d.). National Academy of Sciences.
https://nap.nationalacademies.org/resource/11278/Understanding_Stem_Cells.pdf
Woodruff, Emily. (2017). We simply don’t know: Egg donors face uncertain long-term risks.
STAT. https://www.statnews.com/2017/01/28/egg-donors-risks/
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