Journalists heralded dolly’s birth (the beginning of cloning of mammals) as an “event that alters our very notion of what it means to be human”. Moreover, as Strathern notes, “a technology understood as revolutionary from a scientific perspective may or may not hold revolutionary implications for society.” One of the developing areas of biotechnology is “human cloning” which can involve the production of specific tissues or organs from embryonic or bone marrow stem cells to repair damaged tissue.
CONCEPT OF CLONING
The word “clone” (derived from the Greek word, klon, meaning a twig or slip) is used to describe the creation of an identical replica by the process of asexual reproduction. It is of two types: Therapeutic cloning ‘Therapeutic cloning’ to refer to research into cloning, and techniques involving cloned embryos, which do not have as their ultimate goal the birth of a human clone and would help in tissue transplantation. Reproductive cloning or Replicative Cloning It means where a human clone is allowed to be born. The reproduction of an individual who is genetically identical to one already born.
ISSUES INVOLVED:
The concerns about cloning do not arise from the nature of a clone itself, but from the effects upon the clones, and upon society, of turning the parent child relationship into that of manufacturer to product. Assuming that human cloning can be done safely, should it be done? And how would cloning affect our culture, beliefs, and shared principles of respect for persons, human rights and human dignity? Is Cloning is fundamentally destructive of the rights of children and their human dignity. ? Issues of right to survival, privacy, accountability to use new technology, problems of overspecialization, imbalance of male and female, increase in state control and genetic homogeneity will be raised.
ARGUMENTS WHICH SUPPORT CLONING
One of the groups supports cloning to the extent of calling the ban on cloning as foolish because cloning presents potentially valid medical uses while the moral and ethical implications are clearly unlikely in a modern society. In turn, a ban would actually threaten people’s right to utilize science and the valuable benefits of cloning to improve their lives. It is the environment that influences people’s behavior and personality. Cloning would not be a threat to society, but cloning would aid society by producing more individuals with unique ideas and endangered human ca be protected. It will create a super human.
Everyone deserves the right to live and sustain his or her life. Cloning would protect this right, but a ban would take away this way to sustain life. Strictly speaking, the appeal to human freedom is not so much a defense of cloning itself as it is of the right to practice it, asserted against those who seek to prohibit it. In Eisenstadt v. Baird the United States Supreme Court enunciated what has been called a principle of reproductive freedom: “If the right to privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so affecting a person as a decision whether to bear or beget a child.” Defenders of cloning-to-produce-children argue that, in the event that the physical risks to mother and future child were shown to be ethically acceptable, the use of this new reproductive technology would fall under the protective umbrella of reproductive freedom.
ARGUMENTS WHICH GO AGAINST CLONING
Human cloning is certain to have novel and profound legal ramifications on many non-medical aspects of society. These include the uncertain rights of cloned individuals, genetic donors, and donors of ova, expansion of the wrongful birth doctrine, as well as the emergence of the new crime and possible tort of “genetic identity theft.” These considerations will require legislators and experts in the areas of constitutional law, criminal law, family law, and tort law to re-examine and update their fields accordingly.
- Cloning Robs Children of their Rights to Personal Identity, Individuality, and Uniqueness
Genetic replication imposes vital restraints on the cloned child who will be expected to follow in the wake of the original. Because it makes impossible the child’s genetic independence, cloning holds that child genetic prisoner of another person’s genome. The child is robbed of the freedom to become who she is, her rights to be born many, and to choose among the many that which ultimately becomes that one unique person that lives and dies.
- The clone is a manufactured creature without any definable family relationships.
- Cloning Commodifies Children by Treating Them as Interchangeable
Whether to deny people the right to create a clone is denying them the right to reproduce?
Article 16(1) of the United Nations Declaration of Human rights states “Men and women of full age without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion have the right to marry and to found a family.” This does not imply an unlimited right to create human beings by any technological means available. The wording of the above clause implies that the right to reproduce is the right of a consenting couple, not the right of an individual in isolation, and that the right in question is, therefore, the right of the couple to have their own genetic children. There is a freedom to beget and to bear children. There is no right to manufacture people.
RIGHTS AFFECTED AND CONCERNING LAWS:
1) Cloning is said to affect dignity and health ,the protection of which is given in Indian Constitution of India under Article 21 Right to life and liberty-It is iterated by the courts to include right to privacy, to live with dignity and health. Article 47 talks of Duty of state to improve health.
2) Article 1 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR) emphasizes “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights;” Article 5 of UDHR : “No one shall be subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.” This is in context of forcing a child to be what the parents want to make him irrespective of what he wishes.
3) Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights identifies the importance of free consent to medical or scientific experimentation, and Article 26 the concept of equality before the law and the right not to be discriminated against and it will clearly have implications when human cloning augments.
4)Article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights recognizes the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, and Article 15(1)(b), everyone’s right to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications.
5) Cloning also violates the Convention on the Rights of Children, Article 8: States Parties shall undertake to respect the right of the child to preserve his or her identity. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child emphasizes a child’s right to the highest attainable standard of health care, including access to readily available technology to combat disease and malnutrition
In 2000 the Indian Council of Medical Research issued a Consultative Document on Ethical Guidelines for Biomedical Research on Human Subjects which shows that Indian government’s ethical policy document on the human genome, genetic research and services prohibits reproductive cloning, but opens the door to therapeutic cloning.
Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2001(United States of America)
Sec. 302 clearly prohibits human cloning .But it allowed scientific research, including research in the use of nuclear transfer or other cloning techniques to produce molecules, DNA, cells other than human embryos, tissues, organs, plants, or animals other than humans.
United Nations Declaration on Human Cloning (March 2005)
The General Assembly adopted the United Nations Declaration on Human Cloning, by which Member States were called on to adopt all measures necessary to prohibit all forms of human cloning inasmuch as they are incompatible with human dignity and the protection of human life. Several delegations voted against the text because the reference to “human life” could be interpreted as a call for a total ban on all forms of human cloning as that some states may be prepared to permit strictly controlled applications of therapeutic cloning. Delegate of UK said the Declaration was a non-binding political statement, which would not affect his country’s position on the issue. India had voted against the political Declaration, as some of the provisions of the Declaration could be interpreted as a call for a total ban on all forms of human cloning. India remained totally opposed to reproductive cloning but not to the therapeutic cloning. Hungary said that during the conduct of life sciences, there was a need for a delicate balance between the freedom of research and the adequate protection of human life and dignity.
CONCLUSION
The birth of a cloned human being has not yet been achieved. The possible consequences of such a procedure are not entirely clear. There is a general need for caution in considering a legal response. There is a need for a serious and detailed human rights analysis of the issues involved in reproductive human cloning to be undertaken.Cloning-to-produce-children may represent a forerunner of what will be a growing number of capacities to intervene in and alter the human genetic endowment. But different responsibilities accrue when one sets out to make such changes prospectively, directly, and deliberately. Given the enormous importance of what is at staked “precautionary principle” should be used. This principle would suggest that scientists, technologists, and, indeed, all of us should be modest in claiming to understand the many possible consequences of any profound alteration of human procreation, especially where there are not compelling reasons to proceed. Lacking such understanding, no one should take action as drastic as the cloning of a human child. In the absence of the necessary human wisdom, prudence calls upon us to set limits on efforts to control and remake the character of human procreation and human life.
BY LAWZ BUREAU
