Imagine a world without mystery. Imagine this world with the assumption and probability with a 100% chance that something will happen. In this world, there would be no way of something being unique when it can easily be replicated without error. Technologies in this world are stronger and capable of performing extraordinary tasks, such as creating the most valuable quality in the world, life. Scientists can create life in this world by developing the genetic material within each cell of that instructs how that organism will establish its unique physical traits. This phenomenal process is called cloning. Little is known about this mysterious art of replication even though it can be performed in today’s society and has been done before. Along with an amazing discovery, there comes controversy. In the near future, technology will improve and allow scientists to successfully clone organisms without flaw. It is up to the public to decide whether it is morally right and ethical to perform artificial reproduction to populate our future community. Humanity already knows what the correct answer to that question is. It is not morally right or ethical to clone artificial life in any way what so ever even if the fantasy is ever so appealing to even try. Humanity would be committing a violation to the extreme towards nature and the grateful gift we have been given of sexual reproduction. The scarcest element in the world would soon lose its value. Life as we know it would no longer have worth.
To continue, it is morally wrong and unethical to produce artificial life because there is such a high risk in giving birth during the cloning process. Scottish scientists at Roslin Institute, led by Ian Wilmut, successfully cloned many frogs and mice. They then worked on their biggest project to date, cloning a mammal. After 227 attempts, the first successful result of the bunch was born. This animal was a sheep named Dolly. Dolly was created through a cloning process called somatic nuclear transfer, also referred to therapeutic cloning. This is when the nucleus from a somatic cell of an organism is extracted and placed into an egg cell of a host. After this occurs, the cell grows and multiplies like a pregnancy. Then the host gives birth to its child. As much of a scientific breakthrough Dolly was, she faced very many issues that related to other clones as well. Only 25% - 50% of clones born are deprived of normal oxygen levels. This means that only a little under a half of clones survive the first stage of birth with proper breathing rates and oxygen levels. In comparison, a Japanese study showed that only 5% of sexually reproduced calves died at birth compared to 24% of cloned calves dead at birth. The reason behind this is that approximately half of clones’ genes are found undeveloped at their death. Without properly growing and obtaining key necessities to life, clones die sooner than there expected life span. The most important thing that all clones miss at birth is methylation. Methylation is the genetic imprint that instructs how a cell should grow. Some side effects that clones face include liver failure, deformities, pneumonia, weak immune systems, and lung failure. Each clone found with these side effects died before their expected life time. Even mothers giving birth to clones suffer from cloning births. Clones are typically larger than their actual breed. This means a painful delivery for these mothers giving birth to babies that are too large. This is known a large-offspring syndrome. All in all, three out of twelve mother die from giving cloning births. Experts such as doctors strongly disagree with therapeutic cloning since the chances of success are too little. No matter the organism, there will always be little chance of success and higher chance of failure. Why risk the lives of animals for a chance, according to the outcome of Dolly, of 0.0044% chance of survival? The numbers speak for themselves. The struggles to just give birth to a clone are clearly an issue. Therefore, there is no need for clones.

Moving on, if a clone is to survive birth, what happens? From past experience, many clones live a struggling life of medical issues and often die far before their natural breed’s life expectancy. The chance of a clone living on after birth is only a little under 5%. Of that 5%, 25% of clones face developmental issues. Accordingly, every 100 clones bred, only 5 survive. Roughly 1 in every 5 clones are challenged with developmental issues in their adulthood. Furthermore, with clones being born with all clones not being born with methylation, they are doomed for their later years. A South Korean study showed that bad levels of methylation lead to overgrown placentas, increased body weight, and respiratory, blood or immune problems. Dolly was euthanized at 6 years old compared to her average life expectancy, 12 years. Dolly was euthanized due to a malformed respiratory tract. Dolly’s struggles were also reflected in other clones as well. In the same Japanese study led by Tokyo’s National Institute of Infectious Diseases, they found that cloned mice have shorter life spans than sexually reproduced mice. In the experiment, 12 cloned mice were born and the first mouse died 300 days later, while the next 10 mice died at 800 days. In correlation, 6 out of 7 sexually reproduced mice were alive at 800 days after birth. Thus, with more mice alive at 800 days and with less mice to start out at birth, the sexually reproduced mice proved more successful in their life spans. Almost all clones’ lives tragically end short with sometimes unnatural diseases and conditions that are so far severe, it is almost impossible to obtain them. No organism, human or animal, deserves to suffer a life of tragedy and bad fortune. There is no need to asexually reproduce organisms that are doomed to fail.

In all honesty, technology will improve and the success rate of clones surviving past birth will significantly increase. With that said, envision clones living among us. How will clones affect our society? Will they positively or negatively affect our society? More importantly, how will they affect humans? In consideration of how clones will affect our society, we know from common sense what the outcome would be. Using the knowledge we already have and from recent cloning experiments, it was shown that clones will require more care than a normal animal would. Although the FDA approved of eating goods and meat of clones, it is still not the healthiest of options to choose from. In that perspective, clones do not have high levels of hormones which increase fat levels and decrease protein. In addition, the price to produce a clone is $20,000. The cost for farmers to purchase clones for their farms is far beyond worth of a sexually reproduced animal that provides safer and stronger nutrients for a lesser price. In order to understand the potential impact to our environment and society as a whole, we must establish what we have learned from our past. Invasive species such as Asian carp have been ruining the habitats of many homes to native animals. The Great Lakes and Mississippi River environments have been ruined and even put native animals on the brink of extinction. By introducing clones already with many flaws in genetic genes into the environment, they would mate with the native species. The effect could possibly destroy the entire ecosystem of the world. The newly born animal from both a clone and sexually reproduced clone would take on the traits on both a clone and a sexually reproduced organism. Like a virus, the improper levels of methylation will spread throughout the environment. By the time of the next generation of species comes along, as many as half or maybe even more will have been killed off thus putting that species in endanger. With a species in danger, the food chain will crumble. As the food chain crumbles, animals at the top of the food chain will suffer. As the top of the food chain slowly fades away, the bottom of the food chain rapidly populates. Without balance in the food chain by the higher ranked predators, the entire environment and ecosystem steadily fails as species go extinct, food becomes scarce and nature no longer no longer exists, Earth will completely fail leaving humans to survive without the proper necessities to life.

On the other hand, there are benefits to cloning which include predictable outcomes of organisms that are born. This thought is more intriguing when humans are thrown into the mix of possibly being cloned in the future or even now. Scientists do have the technology to clone humans, but not a consistent rate. Therefore, the controversy comes into play when it is asked whether cloning on humans is ethical. It is beneficial to clone humans with the possibilities of creating a human that is free of any flaw that a normal human would face. These so called, super humans you could call them, would be what we consider perfect. They would be free of diseases, not need as much food, water or care. They would be born perfectly healthy and as strong, tall, or heavy as wanted. The faces of these clones could look however it was requested. Most importantly, these humans could be born years ahead in education of a sexually reproduced human. Qualities like these are wanted by most humans in the world. The temptations force us to overlook what the true problem is to cloning is. All these perks are great and appealing to humans, but is it worth going through all the struggles that come along with getting everything a human could want. Along with cloned mammals, humans will face the same problems with low levels of methylation as animals do. An experiment somewhat like cloning was done on humans in 1992. In the experiment, fetal brain cells were injected into the brains of humans. 15% of the patients had worse conditions like cancer, chronic illnesses and injuries. Every treatment done to inject successful fetal brain cells was a failure. If it is not possible to successfully inject simple cells into a sexually reproduced human, then why is it needed to make the push to start cloning humans? As a matter a fact, cloned humans at about 15 years old will need hip replacement due to the low methylation levels they have. Just five years later, at age 20, a cloned human’s immune system will need start to fail. It is unknown how long cloned humans will live, but health problems like these are started to be found in a normal human around age 60. It is also felt by Christians that it is a disgrace and a way to mock God by creating artificial life and treat the gift he has given his people to sexually reproduce. It is also thought, by not just Christians, that with the idea of picking and choosing the traits of an organism is taking away the uniqueness of each person in the world. Cloning will turn the world into a race to stay up to date and be the best version of a human being possible. There is no need to tamper with the gifts of nature we have been given and replace it with a method that has not proven successful. To continue, cloning will turn life into a worthless value that comes to the point to where it won’t matter if someone dies because scientists can create another life instantly. Also each person will the same as the other. Each cloned human can be just as smart, tall, big, or small as the other. Cloning will turn the wonderful value of life and uniqueness into something that is worthless and no longer needed in our future.

As a final point, our foreseeable future is very cloudy. With technology advancing at the rate it is, who knows what our world will be like in thirty years. Along with those technologies, cloning will continue to improve and it is up to our public to truly dig deep and think to themselves whether it is okay to artificially create a life that will alike to any other organism in the world. They will need to decide whether once these lives are created, they will struggle and brutally die. They will need to decide what kind of person they truly are. Today’s generation already knows the answer to this question. Although this decision is not up to today’s generation. In the near future, humans will decide whether it is morally right to create artificial life and only then it will be determined how much a human values its own individual life.