• Question: What do you think about cloning humans? Do you think the human race would benefit from it? I know it is not possible yet, but would it be possible in the future

    Asked by cazza101 to Jonny, Alison, Hannah, MarthaNari, Paul on 21 Jun 2015. This question was also asked by Pi.
    • Photo: Jonny Brooks-Bartlett

      Jonny Brooks-Bartlett answered on 21 Jun 2015:

      I’m not sure about whether the human race would benefit. It would be hard for humans that have been cloned. Many people wouldn’t see them as real people because they weren’t born like normal humans. So I think that there is a huge ethical problem about how to deal with cloned humans and how we would accept them.

      It is highly likely (probably definitely) possible to clone a human one day but I’m not sure whether anyone actually will

    • Photo: Alison Whitaker

      Alison Whitaker answered on 23 Jun 2015:

      I think it will be possible in the future, but I don’t think it’s a good idea. This could have really useful benefits like for growing perfectly matched organs, but a whole human would have lots of ethical issues.

    • Photo: Martha Havenith

      Martha Havenith answered on 23 Jun 2015:

      I agree – it will be technically possible in future. I don’t see how it would be good for humanity though. Of course there are the ethical troubles (what is a good reason to clone someone? Can we ensure a clone would be treated equally to a ‘normal’ human?).
      But even beyond that, one reason why we don’t just replicate ourselves but have children with a partner is that, evolutionarily speaking, it’s good that humans keep changing, so that we as a group can face different challenges. We need people who are good (and bad) at different things to be great as a species. Cloning ourselves would be the opposite of that – why should there be several people with exactly the same basic talents and tendencies?

    • Photo: Paul Brack

      Paul Brack answered on 24 Jun 2015:

      I don’t think cloning people would be a good idea, no, and it could be a very destructive thing in the wrong hands. That’s why I think we need to have very strict laws about cloning.

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