In this blog post, we will examine the scientific possibilities and ethical issues surrounding human cloning technology and consider the social attitudes and institutional directions we should take.
So far, there have been three industrial revolutions: the first, second, and third. Scientific and technological advances have always accompanied new industrial revolutions. The Fourth Industrial Revolution, which is expected to arrive in the not-too-distant future, is anticipated to be a next-generation industrial revolution that will bring about innovative changes through the convergence of recently developed information processing technologies and biotechnology across the economy and society as a whole. As scientific and technological advances affect society and the economy as a whole, new scientific and technological discoveries and advances have always attracted attention and been accompanied by both positive and negative views. Most negative views have been from ethical, religious, and social perspectives, and the degree of controversy surrounding science and technology intensifies depending on how far the results of science and technology deviate from existing ethical, religious, and social values. Considering the causes of controversy surrounding science and technology, biotechnology, one of the main technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, is currently the hottest topic. Among them, the most controversial is human cloning technology.
To put it simply, cloning is the artificial creation of life by human hands. Cloning technology has been developing since the latter half of the 20th century. The first cloning of a living organism was achieved in 1983, the first cloning of a mammal was achieved in 1997, and in 2002, Dr. Brigitte Boisselier announced that the first human cloning had been achieved, marking the beginning of human cloning. As cloning technology advanced, opposition from religious leaders and scholars grew stronger. Cloning is defined as the creation of another individual identical to an existing individual at the DNA, cellular, and organismal levels. Among other living organisms, human cloning has attracted the most opposition. Let’s take a look at the views on human cloning technology, which is sharply divided between those in favor and those against.
Most of those in favor of human cloning are scientists. They argue that human cloning will bring various benefits and that human cloning technology should be further advanced. First, it can give new hope to infertile couples. In other words, for couples who are unable to conceive through normal means due to problems with their sex cells (sperm), somatic cell nuclear transfer can be used to enable fertilization without sperm, opening up a completely new avenue for solving this problem. If the mother’s egg is used as the somatic nucleus and the mother’s or father’s somatic cell is used as the cell nucleus, it is possible to give birth to a daughter who looks exactly like her mother or a son who looks exactly like his father. In addition, using embryo splitting technology, it is possible to examine fertilized eggs before implanting them into the uterus to filter out defective ones or correct only their genes to obtain the desired healthy baby. Second, damaged organs or body parts can be regenerated from a single cell. Currently, attempts are being made to treat patients with leukemia, Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, and other diseases by culturing normal cells outside the body and injecting them to replace damaged cells. However, due to immunological rejection, the normal cells used for injection are obtained from embryonic stem cells. This is because cells at this stage are not yet mature enough to cause an immune response. However, if we can understand the process of reprogramming human cells without eggs through human embryo cloning research, it will be possible to use the patient’s own cells by dedifferentiating them, thereby reducing the problem of immunological rejection and the ethical issues surrounding the use of embryonic cells. Third, if cloning becomes possible, it may be possible to restore a person’s body to its original state by cloning and transplanting their own body in the event of injury or illness. This would mean that human beings could live forever. Some people who support cloning argue that cloned humans could be mass-produced and used as workers or soldiers.
Let’s take a look at the arguments against cloning. As mentioned above, science and technology affect all areas of life, including religion, ethics, law, and society, and the arguments against cloning can be divided into these categories. First, religion and ethics. Christianity (Protestantism and Catholicism) believes that a single God created humans and controls human life, and based on the doctrine that life is the domain of the Creator, it considers the artificial manipulation of human life to be an insult and a challenge to God. Ethically, there is concern that human cloning would greatly undermine human dignity. If human dignity is based on the fact that human life and personality are absolutely unique and unique in the entire universe, then the possibility of human cloning fundamentally undermines this. In addition, it is clear that numerous fertilized eggs and embryos will be sacrificed in the process of human cloning research and procedures, and some argue that this also violates the dignity of human life. Second, legal and social issues. The biggest problem with current legislation is that it would cause confusion in legal principles based on blood ties and family communities. First, there is the question of how to view the legal status of cloned humans. Furthermore, the freedom and equality of humans guaranteed by the Constitution are based on the premise of the unity and homogeneity of the human species, and the emergence of cloned humans would cause great confusion in this regard. In addition, laws related to pregnancy and childbirth, such as the Maternal and Child Health Act and the crime of abortion in the Criminal Act, will become difficult to apply. Third, social issues. If human cloning becomes possible, the institutions of marriage and family that form the foundation of human society will face a serious crisis. Not only will family relationships become confused, but various forms of families will emerge because it will be possible to have children without necessarily getting married or forming a union between a man and a woman. In addition, those who wish to become parents through cloning technology will want to have babies with the best possible genetic traits, which may lead to new forms of eugenic discrimination and social class divisions.
I am not opposed to human cloning. My main concern is the creation of beings that are “identical” to living people. However, current human cloning technology does not allow for the creation of completely identical human beings. The current technology for cloning humans is somatic cell cloning, in which the genetic information of the cloned human is combined with that of the somatic cell donor and the egg donor, making it impossible to create a perfectly identical human being. Furthermore, the environment in which the somatic cell donor existed as a fetus and the environment in which the cloned human fetus grows will inevitably be different, making it impossible to create two identical humans. Even in the case of identical twins, it is very common for twins to be completely different people due to very small differences, even though they have the same genetic information and grow in the same womb. For this reason, the argument of many anthropologists and religious figures that human cloning violates the dignity of humans as unique individuals is scientifically refutable. Furthermore, as I mentioned above, human cloning technology does not literally mean cloning only “humans,” but also includes cloning organs for various purposes, which is even more diverse than the methods of cloning humans, such as dedifferentiated cells. Opponents use embryonic stem cells for organ replication, arguing that embryos are also individuals and human beings, and that using only part of an embryo that could become a real human being as an organ and discarding the rest is a serious lack of ethical awareness and a violation of human rights. I completely agree with this argument. However, embryonic stem cells are not the only method of organ cloning, and there are various other methods that are less controversial than human cloning. I believe it is right to conduct sufficient research on these methods and utilize them to contribute to the extension of human life and improvement of quality of life. Therefore, I believe that opposing human cloning on ethical and social grounds and immediately halting research, as religious leaders and scholars argue, is like burning down the house to kill a bug. However, I do not fully support human cloning. As I mentioned briefly above, the biggest reason is ethical issues. Human cloning technology is expected to improve the quality of life for humanity from a scientific perspective, and I believe that it is necessary to utilize this technology. However, in order to utilize it, I believe that legal and social agreements are necessary to prevent the violation of human dignity and the misuse of this technology. If a new human being is actually cloned, it is possible to prevent the violation of human dignity caused by this technology when there is social awareness and institutional mechanisms in place to recognize each cloned human being as an individual, rather than treating them as tools, as in the movie “The Island.” Furthermore, when considering human cloning in terms of organ cloning, there are various methods, but embryonic stem cell technology is currently the most advanced organ cloning technology, and other technologies are still under research. However, as mentioned earlier, I believe that embryos should be regarded as individuals because they can grow into fetuses and then into human beings. Therefore, the use of embryo cloning technology is highly problematic from an ethical standpoint. Efforts should be made to utilize organ replication to improve the quality of human life through the further development of other organ replication technologies, such as reverse differentiation cells and somatic cell replication, which do not undermine human dignity. There are always cases where we must make extreme choices, like black and white or heads and tails, but I believe that a middle ground can be found when it comes to cloning. If we continue to research and improve human cloning technology in order to protect the dignity of human beings, who are unique individuals on this planet, and improve their quality of life, human cloning could become the most influential scientific and technological advancement in human history.
