s to examine the issue of cloning and make policy recommendations from their findings. The commission recommended a five-year moratorium on cloning. Their findings and recommendations had several flaws. The most serious flaw of the commission was the sunset clause of five years. Their rationale was as follows: “As scientific information accumulates and public discussion continues, a new judgement may develop and we as a society need to retain the flexibility to adjust our course in this manner” (Callahan, 18). Callahan goes on to say: It is impossible to say that the implicit premise of the rationale for a sunset provision is that all moral judgements should be open to new information and the fruits of public discussion. If so, then should it not apply also to the right of informed consent, reproductive choice, and the reprehensibility of slavery? Should the Nuremberg Code, for instance, now just fifty years old have had a sunset clause? If not, it is hardly evident why such a provision is more pertinent to cloning (18). One of the major ethical roadblocks in the debate over human cloning is that cloning would take away one’s sense of individuality and significantly devalue what it means to be human. A cloned person would spend his or her entire life with the knowledge that there is someone else in the world with the exact same genetic makeup as him/her. This could go so far to cause the clone to view him or herself as a mere replacement. This would be a far greater danger if a child were cloned to replace a child who had died early in life.Scenarios similar to this paint a portrait of a human life as something easily replaced. This would mean that being human would not have nearly the significance it does today. If a human being can be replaced by a small amount of genetic material, that person could be viewed as insignificant and disposable (Annas 123).The financial drive of medicine presents another m...
