Thoughts on my essay?

[chrisofthedale]

“Cloning of humans should be allowed”

Should cloning of humans be allowed? Many think that it shouldn’t be allowed. There are ethical, religious and scientific issues which first must be assessed. This essay will be listing the many, and controversial reasons stating why cloning of humans and animals should not be allowed.
For years many people of different religions have believed that their god is the reason they are created and many believe that god makes us for a reason. The first of these reasons being that of religious controversy that is spread wide among the people of the world. Christian religious groups believe that a fertilized ovum is in fact a person with full human rights. There is also the fact that when dividing that “baby” in half during an embryo cloning procedure would intervene with gods intent. The many cloned zygotes that die after a few cell divisions are considered as a serious loss of a human being; they consider it as serious as a loss of a newborn child. They are distressed by the use of cloning to weed out genetically defective fertilized ova in therapeutic cloning procedures, the procedure involves the killing of one clone during the genetic testing and since they regard each of the clones as humans this would be murder. Other question if a cloned embryo could even possess a soul. The Church of Scotland believes that a routine procedure of cloning animals for meat, milk and so on is an unacceptable co-modification of animals. They also believe that every human being has a unique place under god. The Pope has been noted with saying we fail to respect the dignity and value of persons in these methods, which must be stopped. The Pope has said,” I am thinking in particular of attempts at human cloning with a view of obtaining organs for transplants: these techniques insofar as they involve the manipulation and destruction of human embryos are not morally acceptable, even where their proposed goal is good in itself.”
The second reason is morality. Is it really all right to kill others and use their death to help others? Many people believe strongly against this like they would abortion. Why should we kill others for science? People disagree with abortion because it kills human lives, well the same happens in cloning. As stated in the second paragraph, a lot of the procedures involve the killing of a human being in some way or another. This should not be allowed because in fact, it is the murder of another being. Many people have no idea which way to go on this issue, but why should we have to kill others is the main issue here. So as far as morality goes many are lost in their opinion.
The last reason has to do with scientific research. How extensive is their research in truth? They have to research and study this longer, they have not studied this as long as they should have so how can they be sure about many things? Some people think they should do a long and very extensive research on this subject till it is perfected, only then should we think about using it. As far as humans go we have no idea what the long-term effects on a clone are. It may turn out that many clones end up developing many medical problems. We are not sure what their psychological selves will be like; will they act the same as their clone or be completely different? Clones may also develop mental problems knowing that that are a clone. Not much is known on the topic so therefore it must be researched more, maybe we will never find the way to make a perfect “copy” of a human. The more we learn, the more we realize we don’t know or are even more baffled on what to do. So as far as this subject goes, I believe we need to know more about effects and soon.
Clearly not much is known in some aspects of cloning. There are many issues that must first be solved and there is the morality of the issue. We may not know much in some aspects, which means we must learn more and have a basic knowledge of it all. With all of these issues there may never be cloning of humans and maybe we will let it be or research it till the topic is so well known that it is useless. Or will we find some the answer to all of these problems and maybe get around to cloning after all? We may never see the outcome, but the future holds promise on this issue, but for now the topic is still under much controversy.

Bibliography
- www.religioustolerance.org/clo_recac.htm
- www.globeandmail.com

what do you think? and please don't copy my works, ask first

[Lord Lothar]

It's God not god.

[chrisofthedale]

happens that my science teacher believes God is not a person

[Gabriel]

It's good. It seems heavy on listing the 'against' arguments and, IMHO, could do with a little more countering and mention of the 'for' arguments.
The first and second reasons seem to state the same thing, if you do not belive it is a living person it is not really murder anymore the killing a bug or bacteria.
The third paragraph about more research doesn't seem to include that some of the examples you give in fact need clonning to take place in order to find out.
Also there is no mention about possible and existing regluations on the subject or the view of other world communities.
It also could do with a good summery at the end, something like how the arguments seem to lead to the old story of science Vrs religion. Is the lives of the many more important then the lives few and how the answers may seem is the hard one to make.

edit: spelling and the last bit.

[ 11-11-2002, 09:59 PM: Message edited by: Gabriel ]

[Triconan]

I just skipped through but I looked good from the parts thatI read. It's just that I have a short attenion span.

[Nanobyte]

One thing I cannot understand: how do teachers figure their students can write a reasonable, four-paragraph essay (including intro and conclusion) in a maximum of thirty minutes? I don't mean to bash on teachers, as I'm a fun-loving guy and all, but we had to write an essay on Romanticism in English last week. Hardly anyone finished, even their first paragraph, within the time constraint, but what our teacher said was this, "I'll grade you on what you have." I had five bloomin' examples in my first paragraph (from four different sources), and she gave me a 70! I'm not that bad of a writer, I made a 93 on the research paper last year, but the entire semester this year I've made no higher than an 83.. I sincerely wish she would spend more time revisiting the basics, and spend less on US history, since this is really hurting my GPA.

Just blowing off some steam

[Aelia Jusa]

It's not bad. I don't know what it's for so it's not clear what type of standard it should be, or who it's aimed at so it's hard to critique it. You have some grammatical errors, with apostrophising, and also using commas where a semi-colon would be better. Also where you have 'I believe', it's generally better in an essay like this to use 'I maintain' or 'I argue'. Beliefs are wishy-washy; you're making a claim and justifying it, so say so. You also pose a lot of questions like "Is it really all right to kill others and use their death to help others?" - questions are okay but sometimes it's better to just make a statement rather than pose questions that you'll be answering in the text anyway.

This bit I don't really understand: "For years many people of different religions have believed that their god is the reason they are created and many believe that god makes us for a reason. The first of these reasons being that of religious controversy that is spread wide among the people of the world." Do you mean the reason God makes us is so religious controversy is spread around the world? That doesn't make sense to me.

It also might be helpful for you to do some research on the ethical debate about abortion since it's tied closely with this. You have a few statements like "Many people have no idea which way to go on this issue" - this isn't really adding to your argument. Might be better to find some arguments for (try someone like Mary Ann Warren) and against (try Don Marquis) which you can consider.

Hope that helps [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Jeffi0]

GTG to school now so I only read the first few lines, but IIRC you aren't supposed say "this essay" or "my essay" etc. Put "There are three major (or many) reasons why the cloning of humans should not be allowed" or something like that.

[ 11-11-2002, 10:21 PM: Message edited by: Jeffi0 ]

[Aelia Jusa]

Originally posted by Nanobyte: One thing I cannot understand: how do teachers figure their students can write a reasonable, four-paragraph essay (including intro and conclusion) in a maximum of thirty minutes? I don't mean to bash on teachers, as I'm a fun-loving guy and all, but we had to write an essay on Romanticism in English last week. Hardly anyone finished, even their first paragraph, within the time constraint, but what our teacher said was this, "I'll grade you on what you have." I had five bloomin' examples in my first paragraph (from four different sources), and she gave me a 70! I'm not that bad of a writer, I made a 93 on the research paper last year, but the entire semester this year I've made no higher than an 83.. I sincerely wish she would spend more time revisiting the basics, and spend less on US history, since this is really hurting my GPA. Just blowing off some steam

Heh I have an ancient history exam on Thursday - it's three essays of 800-1000 words each in two hours, or 40 minutes an essay. Lucky I write fast

[Aelia Jusa]

Originally posted by Jeffi0: GTG to school now so I only read the first few lines, but IIRC you aren't supposed say "this essay" or "my essay" etc. Put "There are three major (or many) reasons why the cloning of humans should not be allowed" or something like that.

It depends. Some areas you can't mention yourself at all, it's all third person stuff. Other areas it's okay; philosophy you have to use 'I will argue' and 'I maintain' and so on. Using 'this essay will show', or 'this section will consider' is generally okay.