Somewhere in Eastern Europe there are three children. They are aged 9 and they are copies of their dad. That's because they are clones, grown from a skin cell from their own fathers in a laboratory.
This is the claim of Severino Antinori, an Italian scientist. He will not tell us about the children, because he says we must respect their privacy. Is he telling the truth? Cloning animals has been going on for a long time - the first animal cloned was Dolly the Sheep. Not all cloned animal experiments are successful. Dolly the Sheep was found to age too fast. Cloning human beings is not allowed by law, partly because scientists are not sure it is safe. In Italy the Catholic Church is very much against it for religious reasons.
Severino Antinori says his method is new and different. He likes to call it 'genetic recording' instead of cloning. He thinks that changing the name of what he is doing will make us more likely to accept it.
What do you think? What would you say to support your argument if you were Severino Antinori? Or one of the fathers, who was sterile and couldn't have children the normal way? Or one of the children? What could be religious reasons for saying 'no'? Could there be other reasons on moral grounds? And should cloning animals be allowed, if cloning humans is not?
Discuss this in your philosophy group.
This issue connects to the branches of philosophy called ethics and philosophy of science.
(Source: BT Yahoo News 4.3.09)
