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In bioethics, the ethics of cloning refers to a variety of ethical positions regarding the practice and possibilities of cloning, especially human cloning. While many of these views are religious in origin, the questions raised by cloning are faced by secular perspectives as well. Perspectives on human cloning are theoretical, as human therapeutic and reproductive cloning are not commercially used; animals are currently cloned in laboratories and in livestock production. Advocates support development of therapeutic cloning in order to generate tissues and whole organs to treat patients who otherwise cannot obtain transplants, to avoid the need for immunosuppressive drugs, and to stave off the effects of aging. Advocates for reproductive cloning believe that parents who cannot otherwise procreate should have access to the technology. Opponents of cloning have concerns that technology is not yet developed enough to be safe, that it could be prone to abuse (leading to the generation of humans from whom organs and tissues would be harvested), and have concerns about how cloned individuals could integrate with families and with society at large. Religious groups are divided, with some opposing the technology as usurping God's place and, to the extent embryos are used, destroying a human life; others support therapeutic cloning's potential life-saving benefits. Cloning of animals is opposed by animal-groups due to the number of cloned animals that suffer from malformations before they die, and while food from cloned animals has been approved by the US FDA, its use is opposed by some other groups concerned about food safety. ==Philosophical debate== The various forms of cloning, particularly human cloning, are controversial. There have been numerous demands for all progress in the human cloning field to be halted. Most scientific, governmental and religious organizations oppose reproductive cloning. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and other scientific organizations have made public statements suggesting that human reproductive cloning be banned until safety issues are resolved. Serious ethical concerns have been raised by the future possibility of harvesting organs from clones. Advocates of human therapeutic cloning believe the practice could provide genetically identical cells for regenerative medicine, and tissues and organs for transplantation. Such cells, tissues, and organs would neither trigger an immune response nor require the use of immunosuppressive drugs. Both basic research and therapeutic development for serious diseases such as cancer, heart disease, and diabetes, as well as improvements in burn treatment and reconstructive and cosmetic surgery, are areas that might benefit from such new technology. One bioethicist, Jacob M. Appel of New York University, has gone so far as to argue that "children cloned for therapeutic purposes" such as "to donate bone marrow to a sibling with leukemia" may someday be viewed as heroes. Proponents claim that human reproductive cloning also would produce benefits to couples who cannot otherwise procreate. In the early 2000s Severino Antinori and Panos Zavos stirred controversy when they publicly stated plans to create a fertility treatment that allows parents who are both infertile to have children with at least some of their DNA in their offspring.〔Staff, Times Higher Education. August 10, 2001 (In the news: Antinori and Zavos )〕 In Aubrey de Grey's proposed SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence), one of the considered options to repair the cell depletion related to cellular senescence is to grow replacement tissues from stem cells harvested from a cloned embryo.〔de Grey, Aubrey; Rae, Michael (September 2007). ''Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs that Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime''. New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, 416 pp. ISBN 0-312-36706-6.〕 There are also ethical objections. Article 11 of UNESCO's Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights asserts that the reproductive cloning of human beings is contrary to human dignity, that a potential life represented by the embryo is destroyed when embryonic cells are used, and there is a significant likelihood that cloned individuals would be biologically damaged, due to the inherent unreliability of cloning technology. Ethicists have speculated on difficulties that might arise in a world where human clones exist. For example, human cloning might change the shape of family structure by complicating the role of parenting within a family of convoluted kinship relations. For example, a female DNA donor would be the clone's genetic twin, rather than mother, complicating the genetic and social relationships between mother and child as well as the relationships between other family members and the clone.〔McGee, Glenn (2000). 'The Perfect Baby: Parenthood in the New World of Cloning and Genetics.' Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.〕 In another example, there may be expectations that the cloned individuals would act identically to the human from which they were cloned, which could infringe on the right to self-determination. Proponents of animal rights argue that non-human animals possess certain moral rights as living entities and should therefore be afforded the same ethical considerations as human beings. This would negate the exploitation of animals in scientific research on cloning, cloning used in food production, or as other resources for human use or consumption.〔Staff, Humane Society (Cloning )〕〔Sean Poulter for the Daily Mail. November 26, 2010. (Clone farming would introduce cruelty on a massive scale, say animal welfare groups )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「ethics of cloning」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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