My Daughter and Her Shadow

My Daughter and Her Shadow

I have a daughter. Her name is Terra Jones. She is very important to me, so when I found that her kidneys were weak and already beginning to give out, I was torn. I didn't want her to live a life tied down by dialysis machines and always be careful about the activities she allows herself to participate in. It isn't right for her to be plagued by these concerns at all times. That is why I turned to thoughts of cloning. If she were cloned and we used the healthy kidneys from her clone, then she could live a more carefree life and not be tied down for the rest of her short life. Her quality of life was my dominant concern. She doesn't deserve to live like this, but then again, what would become of her clone.

I never really spent the time to think about her clone, I just focused upon what pieces cut from the flesh of her clone could do for my daughter. I only thought of her clone as meat that could greatly improve the quality of life that my daughter could have. Now that I think about it though, her clone is still a person. Sure, it has the same genetic materials that my daughter does, but that doesn't negate the fact that this clone breathes, smiles, feels pain, and desires to live as much as my daughter does. Is it really morally acceptable to consider this clone nothing more than a means? What does my utilitarian belief system tell me I should do in this situation?

After a great deal of thinking, I decided it isn't more profitable to society to conduct human cloning, no matter what the motivation may be. After cloning one person to save another's life, cloning wouldn't seem as much of a dark deed. After a while, cloning out of the need to save someone's life would melt into cloning for the sake of ulterior motives. Cloning may begin to be conducted out of the desire to experiment on the human body. After a while, human clones may become test subjects. The clones may be used just like lab rats, being forced to kill off their systems for the sake of mankind. What else could this then lead to? What would we allow to slip by, as long as it aided our cause? At first these slip ups may seem to benefit humanity, I mean look at the options. There would be available organs for transfers; there would be perfect test subjects; there would even be available bodies for manual labor, but therein lies the problem. When the clones became devalued as would undoubtedly occur, even humans would begin to be devalued in general. Eventually, people would blur the lines between clones and normal people. I mean, they look the same, they feel the same, they act the same, what difference is there between the two? Life would slowly begin to lose meaning, and the thing that