Is Human Cloning the Future for Infertile Couples?

Is Human Cloning the Future for Infertile Couples?

Imagine your doctor telling you that you have no more options; you’ll never have a child of your own. You’ve gone through all the testing, taken hormone shots and tried in vitro fertilization (IVF). Your husband, grudgingly, had his sperm checked to make sure his count was significant. Nothing worked. Time after time, the doctor tells you that you aren’t pregnant. Adoption is an option, but you really want to carry a child of your own and give birth. Then you hear of a new alternative, human cloning. This could be your last chance, your only chance. But, it isn’t legal…yet. There are many people in this situation that would greatly benefit from cloning. These are people who have tried unsuccessfully for many years to conceive a child, just to be let down again and again. This is just one situation that involves someone who can not conceive, there are many more. Could human cloning be the future of reproduction for infertile people? Might this be the answer to hopeless couples, widowed women and homosexual couples? Many questions evolve around this subject. Many people question the legal and moral issues. Cloning is a controversial subject among politicians, but legalizing cloning can guarantee that human beings will never become extinct. We need our children. Our children are our future. Our future starts today.

Dr. Ian Wilmut of the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh, Scotland, together with a team of scientists questioned the reprogramming of specialized cells (i.e.: skin and organs) into thinking that they were not specialized and develop all over again, thus creating a clone. To answer this question, Wilmut’s team took a test cell from a ewe and starved it of its nutrients to the point where the cell stopped dividing and making DNA. They extracted the cell’s nucleus and transplanted it using electrical pulses into an unfertilized egg with no nucleus. The new egg was then transplanted into a surrogate mother. On July 5, 1996, Dolly, was born. The procedure to clone humans would be similar to the one Wilmut used to clone Dolly. The fertilized egg can be transplanted into a human woman’s uterus and she will carry the embryo until birth. The following chart

identifies the process used in the cloning of Dolly and how it might work on humans. In step one, the chart specifies a donor woman; however, this donor could also be a man. The process seems fairly simple, but during the procedure, Wilmut tried unsuccessfully more than 277 times before Dolly was created (Clone Wars).

Many people do not understand the benefits of human cloning. There has been so much negative publicity that the benefits have been overshadowed. Anti-cloning activists say the world would be full of mini-Hitlers, yet in his

book titled Remaking Eden, Cloning and Beyond in a Brave New World, Professor Lee Silver from Princeton University states, “clones of Hitler are not going to happen.” He emphasizes that human cloning is “not controlled by declarations, committees or states, but by the marketplace.” If there is a need, the need should be fulfilled. Silver stresses that careful and extensive research should be done on animals before attempting cloning of humans.

The Importance of Cloning to Infertile Couples Many women have suffered through the agony of doctor after doctor telling them that they can not get pregnant. The heartbreak suffered by these women is unbearable. Infertile couples could have renewed hope if cloning were an option. Not only would they have another option to become pregnant, but they could also determine the sex and physical presence of their child.

Human cloning would also help to prevent multiple births. “While 58 percent of multiple births are delivered by women who use fertility drugs, another 22 percent are born of women who undergo IVF” (Andrews 52). The process of IVF involves implanting several fertilized eggs into a woman’s uterus. The doctor does not know how many of the eggs will develop into embryos. If all the eggs develop, the woman may then be carrying multiple babies, putting herself and her children at risk. With human cloning, the egg has already been fertilized and the number of births would be known prior to insertion. So should these couples consider adoption before cloning? Not necessarily. If given the option to have their own child, most couples would sway towards natural birth. To have a living, breathing child of their own would be much more preferable to some couples. There will always be people willing to adopt, people willing to love a child borne unto another. And then there are the others, the people desperately seeking to give birth to a child of their own. Cloning is the