Is human cloning acceptable?

The birth of Dolly, the first mammal cloned from a somatic sell, attracted wide public attention in Japan, and the words “cloned human being” became a popular notion. However, the “public debate” on the ethics of human cloning was considerably less heated than that relating to brain death and organ transplantation. Scientists and commentators repeatedly stated that while the cloning of a sheep was acceptable, human cloning should be prohibited. A well-known female scientist said that she could not imagine a scientist who would try to clone a human being.

In 1998, the Council for Science and Technology established the Bioethics Committee and asked its members to examine the ethical and legal aspects of human cloning. The Committee concluded, in 1999, that human cloning should be prohibited, and, based on the report, the government presented a bill for the regulation of human cloning in 2000. After a debate in the Diet, the original bill was slightly modified and issued on December 6, 2000. [1/2]

In the following chapters, I take a closer look at this process and discuss some of the ethical problems that were debated. Also, I make a brief analysis of the concept “the sprout of human life.”

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The Ethics of Human Cloning and the Sprout of Human Life (2004)
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