The biggest problem with the use of cloning on a large is scale is the decline in genetic diversity. Think about it, if everyone has the same genetic material, what happens if we lose the ability to clone. We would have to resort to natural reproduction, causing us to inbreed, which will cause many problems. Also, if a population of organisms has the same genetic information, then the disease would wipe out the entire population. Helping endangered species by cloning will not help the problem. Currently, zoologists and environmentalists trying to save endangered species are not so much having trouble keeping population numbers up, but not having any animals to breed that are not cousins. The technique of nuclear transfer is also early in its developmental stages. Thus, errors are occurring when scientists carry out the procedure. For instance, it took 277 tries to produce Dolly, and Roslin scientists produced many lambs with abnormalities. If we tried to clone endangered species we could possibly kill the last females integral to the survival of a species. This may be the main reason science is holding out on cloning humans.
Other arguments for cloning include if we are taking nature into our own
hands by cloning animals or people. People question when we will draw the
line for getting involved in natural events. Religious organizations consider
nuclear transfer to cause men to be reproductively obsolete. This claim
was deduced by gathering of the information that cloning requires only
oocytes, any cell, and
a woman to develop in. They also claim that
cloning does not respect the fact that humans have souls. They also consider
cloning unnatural, and say we are taking the work of God into our own hands.
There is also a debate as to the moral rights of clones.
Some say their rights will be defied because clones are not granted the
birth of newness. That we would not receive clones with such excitement
as a child of a couple who conceived naturally. If natural reproduction
were to occur, genetic variation would occur. They say cloning would deprive
a person of uniqueness. They argue that
identical twins are not unique from each other, but that they are new in
genetic variation and unique from anything that came before them. People
also wonder what mental and emotional problems would result if a clone
were to find out that he or she was cloned.