Introduction
The contemporary world has been associated with an advanced technology which has greatly boosted efficiency and effectiveness across all sectors ranging from business, engineering to the medical field.
The concept of cloning is among the most recent human discoveries that have greatly transformed societies. The invention has been associated with many benefits such as the ability to supplement natural organs with those generated those cloning.
For instance, cloning has enabled generation of organs which has created an alternative organs supply which those organs that are delivered from donors during the organ transplant instances. Organs generated through cloning have been noted to be very effective as they are not known to experience any rejections since they share the same gene with the body system.
Background Study
Animal cloning has experienced a considerable success in the past few years. The first successful animal cloning was realized in 1997 when the Dolly sheep was successfully cloned.
Since then, animal cloning has greatly improved as noted by the ability of scientists to regenerate pigs, rabbits, goats among other animals. Despite, the great success in animal cloning, human cloning has remained a great problem to many scientists. The recent success of a Korean scientist to generate stem cells from cloned human embryos is a great step for the success of human cloning.
In spite of the presence of a very advanced technology in animal cloning, the process has been associated with many failures with a success rate of one or three in a hundred experiments. Human cloning on the other hand refers to the process of creation of genetically copy of a human.
There are generally three diverse processes of cloning which include Embryonic cloning, adult DNA cloning and the therapeutic cloning. Embryo cloning is also regarded as artificial twinning. This process involves removing one or more cells from an embryo and enabling the cell to develop on separately having the same DNA as the original embryo.
This type of cloning has recorded a significant success and especially in animal cloning. It has being tested minimally on humans. The Adult DNA cloning is the process that entails removing the DNA from the embryo and replacing it with another one from an adult animal.
The method is employed to give an exact duplicate of an existing animal. The process has been successfully carried out on sheep and goats, but not tried on human beings. Therapeutic cloning is the process that is used to clone human tissues or a human organ for transplant.
Various scholars and individuals perceive the issue of human cloning differently depending on one’s ethnicity, age, religion and gender. The researcher used the family members who included his parents, his younger brother and sister to find out how the aforementioned variables influence people’s perception about human cloning.
Methodology Used
The research entailed a survey where the researcher prepared a questionnaire that the participants were required to fill accordingly and return them. The researcher in addition, organized a face –to-face interview with respective participants in order for him to clarify some issues and gather sufficient and relevant data for analysis.
The researcher used the questioner as his instrumental tool for collecting relevant data that was required to determine how age, ethnicity, religion and gender influenced an individual’s perception about human cloning. The questions that were contained in the questioner included both open and closed questions.
The closed questions were tailored in manner so that the interviewee could identify an answer from the range of alternatives provided. This was important since it enabled quantification of the variables. On the other hand, the use of open questions helped the participants to give their personal views pertaining to specific issues.
This helped in the qualitative study. The study used the researcher family members as the participants who included his, mother, father, younger brother and sister. After collecting relevant data, the questionnaires were coded, filtered and the data analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively.
The study was subjected to a number of limitations. One of the limitations that was observed was lack of a larger number of participants who participated in this survey; the failure meant that the researcher did not get sufficient data to facilitate proper inferences from the results presented.
Lack of larger number of participants meant that the researcher did not have an opportunity to study some important variables. For instance, all my participants being Christian denied me an opportunity to learn how other religions perceive the issue of human cloning.
The lack of large number of participants was necessitated by lack of enough resources that is, money and time to conduct the survey on a larger context. All my participants participated actively while responding to the questions posed to them, apart from my dad who was noted to shy away while addressing some issues.
Results and Analysis
All my family members embraced the concept of therapeutic cloning as an appropriate medical strategy to address the shortage of organs for transplant. All the four members agreed that the use of therapeutic cloning will greatly enhance the living of many people and especially those that require organs transplants such as the kidney and liver.
Although all of them were aware that these organs can alternatively be received from compatible donors, they were of the opinion that therapeutic cloning should be used to produce necessary organs for cloning since organs produced through this process are the best and cannot be subjected to rejection by the recipients system since they have the DNA of the recipient.
They also embraced the therapeutic cloning as they viewed it as a very appropriate technique to address the prevalent shortages for organs for transplant and especially in this era when peoples are opting for the sale of their organs rather than offer them for free.
My younger brother and sister accepted the human cloning as being the best strategy for procreation, since it gives individuals a great opportunity to determine whether he/she opts for twins or triplets.
They also supported human cloning as the best strategy for procreation since it’s more flexible than the natural method. Through this process one is given the opportunity to select offspring with the desired traits. Human cloning is very flexible and thus, the concerned party is more privileged in selecting the most perfect donor for one’s offspring.
This opportunity offers relevant individuals chances to select the donor of one’s offspring depending on one’s desired traits. On the other hand, my father and mother disagreed with human cloning as being the best strategy to foster twin offspring. They advocated for the natural twinning method which they argued was very effective and not prone to uncertainty of failure.
They equally contested the use of human cloning in establishing a pedigree child. My parents rejected the use of cloning technology to bring up a superb generation, since the offspring generated will lack varieties which brings beauty in life. My mother argued that although cloning may be employed to bring forth a race of people with super strengths such as Michal Jordan, the generation generated may unfortunately suffer from low intelligence which can make it being exploited as slaves.
Thus, cloning of humans should only guarantee emergence of a super human being who are both physically and intelligently dominate than the present humans we have today.
My sister and mother showed some inclination towards greatly accepting the idea of cloning as a solution to instances of infertility or genetically inherited illness. They argued that instead of someone engaging into extra marital affairs in the process of looking for a child, the use of cloning is an effective method of one getting one’s offspring.
In addition they argued those people that suffer from genetically inheritable diseases should consider opting for cloning method as their process of procreation to eradicate chances of passing these genes to their offspring.
My dad was of the opinion that instead of the use of cloning method as the process to foster children, the couple in question should consider adapting children. With adaption of the children, the family will have an opportunity to raise their own children and save the society and government the burden of looking after the adapted children.
When it came to the issue that cloning is the best strategy to guarantee the sex of a child, my dad greatly appreciated this concept by dad arguing that cloning was a better strategy to adapt for fostering children as it gives one a guarantee of a 100% about the sex of the child.
He argued that with the great medical technology, one is given an opportunity to get a baby of one’s preferred sex, without undergoing the natural method of try and error.
Similarly, my younger sister equally accepted the use of cloning as a technique of fostering siblings of desired sex. She argued that the ability to choose the sex of the child will greatly help in addressing the great gender imbalances that exist between men and women.
My mother and younger brother did not support the use of cloning in procreating siblings of one desired sex. My mother argued that the sex of a child does not matter and emphasized that God has His own unique way of ensuring harmony in the society between men and women. From this discussion, it was evident about how one’s ethnicity background is influential in one’s perception towards certain issues.
My dad being raised in a society where the boy child was greatly honored than the girl child was noted to emphasize more on the importance of determining the sex of a child. My mother being a bit younger and having been raised through more modernized setting shared similar opinions with my younger brother.
Therefore the issue of one’s background upbringing should not be underrated when addressing certain issues and in particular gender issues, since those people that share similar views with my dad are be termed as being greatly affected by gender stratification, where boys are regarded as being more superior to girls.
All the four considered human cloning as an unethical issue that tries to rob God his procreation powers which was only vested on humans upon their coming together through sexual intercourse.
My mother and dad greatly objected cloning since they complained that it will foster homosexuality since this is the only method that can guarantee the gay an opportunity to get children a situation that has greatly been used by many Christian to question the practicability of the gay marriages.
Similarly, all my family members rejected the idea of human cloning as a means of body replacement. They considered this cloning aspect as only a myth that is only founded in the scientist dreams.
The cloning idea that predicts the chances of replacement of human body is like giving humans the power to resurrect which is out of context and contradicts the Christian teachings that believes that it is only God the ‘Yahweh’ who has the power to resurrect people.
My family members all being Christians felt very offended by this proposition. This explained how one’s religion belief is very influential in determining one perception of the things or action that one interacts with.
From the proceeding discussion, it is apparent that different age groups possess diverse views concerning some of the issues that we face in our dairy activities. The research indicated that ethnicity, gender, religion and education featured as very important factors that determine how people perceive issues.
The older generation that is here represented by my dad is known to be more affected by gender stratification where they assign more importance to boys than to girls. My mother who belongs to the middle group does not suffer from gender stratification and appears to reason in similar manner to the youthful generation which is represented by my younger brother and sister.
Religion is noted as a strong factor that influences how people attach values to those things that they interact with which intern influences how they interpret situations. Religion beliefs are known as very strong forces that have resulted to very distinct decisions.
Education was also noted as an important ingredient factor that determines how we interpret situations. Education helps individuals become is noted in the discussion as bringing forth the enlightenment in society by equipping them with appropriate information and skills that help them make informed choices. My family members being all learned enabled them to address the posed questions appropriately.
Since they were all well knowledgeable and conversant with the topic about human cloning, they made their contributions and adequately defended their points with relevant backing. Therefore, education is an important factor in any society as it determines how individuals in that society perceives, expresses or reacts to diverse situations.
A society that is not well educated is associated with being ignorant and takes many things for granted, while an educated society is characterized with being well informed and employs very strategic approaches while dealing with its problems, without taking anything for granted.