This last example gives a whole new meaning to the Jerry Springer show. I could see it now: “My husband is in love with my clone daughter”. Yet, this risk is one that can very likely happen. In this world, we already have molesters and sexual abusers, the fact that cloning is around can only add to these problems. Sexual abuse is not the only problem. Physical and emotional abuse can also occur. If the father in the above example should one day be upset with his wife, he could take out his anger on the cloned child. He could see her as a substitute and place his anger towards her.
The final emotional risk I offer you is the following, in which Dr. Dixon says: Or maybe the child knows it is the twin of a dead brother or sister. What kind of pressures will he or she feel, knowing they were made as a direct replacement for another? It is a human experiment doomed to failure because the child will NOT be identical in every way, despite the hopes of the parents. One huge reason will be that the child will be brought up in a highly abnormal household: one where grief has been diverted into making a clone instead of adjusting to loss. The family environment will be totally different than that the other twin experienced. That itself will place great pressures on the emotional development of the child. You will not find a child psychiatrist in the world who could possibly say that there will not be very significant emotional risk to the cloned child as a result of these pressures. (1995, 4)
It is true what Dr. Patrick Dixon says; what does happen when the child realizes that he/she was created in order to replace a loved one? This pressure will surely leave a poor child in distress and can possibly affect his/her relationship with his parents if he/she does not replace the loved one in the way that they had hoped. After having given these 3 examples, I feel that this is yet another reason why cloning is too risky. Even if there were no physical risks involved in the procedure and it was ethical, this last disadvantage is one that can never truly be fixed. This is because no matter what a scientist does, this last disadvantage is one that comes from the heart and the brain of the parent and the cloned child involved. These psychological risks cannot be controlled.
Although there are many who believe that cloning can be used for good in this world, I being one of them, these good things, such as: reproducing needed organs, curing paralysis, and curing incurable diseases cannot be accomplished without great risks. All of these good points are almost certainly going too be proceeded by some sort of injustice or misuse of this incredible technology. This theory is back up by Dr. Patrick Dixon who states:
What would Hitler have done with cloning technology if available in the 1940s? There are powerful leaders in every generation who will seek to abuse this technology for their own purposes. Going ahead with cloning technology makes this far more likely. You cannot have so-called therapeutic cloning without reproductive cloning because the technique to make cloned babies is the same as to make a cloned embryo to try to make replacement tissues.
And at the speed at which biotech is accelerating there will soon be other ways to get such cells – adult stem cell technology. It is rather crude to create a complete embryonic identical twin embryo just to get hold of stem cells to make – say – nervous tissue. Much better to take cells from the adult and trigger them directly to regress to a more primitive form without the ethical issues raised by inserting a full adult set of genes into an unfertilised egg. (1995) Here he backs up the facts that for every good that can be done with this technology, there is at least one misuse or problem that can occur and will most likely occur. It is for this reason that I feel that no matter how many great things that can come from cloning, there are just too many disadvantages attached to it.
Conclusion
Cloning is a science that has the potential to both be used for good in this world, or for evil, and based on the findings in my research, which ranges from the unethical aspect of murdering embryos and performing experiments on unknowing babies to the emotional risks that can occur when the cloned child feels that they have to live up to the standards of the their principle clone, the potential dangers of cloning outweigh the potential good.
Cloning is not even close to being safe enough to attempt; with such risks as rapid aging and the possibility of injuring the baby and the mother. All of this research allowed me to conclude that cloning is unethical, unsafe and has too many emotional risks attached to it in order to be legalized. So, in order for me to conclude I would like to leave you with this thought: If you ever thought of having a cloned child, I want you to ask yourself the following questions: “Am I willing to deal with all of the possible complications involved with cloning? Am I willing to possibly watch my beautiful child age at a pace that is twice as fast then he/she should have?
Am I ready to possibly watch this child buried long before you go? Am I ready to deal with all of the emotional risks that will be attached to a cloned child? And finally if all of these don’t deter you from cloning, I want you to take a look at the world we live in today and see how many orphans there are and how many already born children are struggling to find a home. If cloning falls in to the hands of the wrong people picture that number being multiplied. Is this a society we would want to live in? So let us not play God and recreate a world in which freedom is lost.