Contemporary Philosophical Issue Term Paper

Type of paper: Term Paper

Topic: Cloning, Technology, Food, Human, Philosophy, Ethics, Morality, Happiness

Pages: 3

Words: 825

Published: 2023/02/22

Contemporary Issue

Cloning technology is fairly recent, while agricultural cloning is frontier area in science of genetics as it promises to solve the problem of global hunger. This technology offers a number of benefits including resistance to disease, herbicides and pests, increased yields, nutrients and stress tolerance. The application of this technology in animals for food is also being used on a large scale. However, there are also potential threats of the use of this technology such as extinction of the wild varieties, unknown human health impacts, loss of flora and fauna biodiversity, and unknown effects on other organisms. In addition, there are ethical issues raised in context of the use of this technology including tampering with nature by mixing genes.
In other words, cloning is the most high profile biotechnology which has raised intense debate and interest for its implications. The technology attracted immediate media attention and intense debate as soon as Scottish scientists at Roselin Institute created the much celebrated cloned ship “Dolly” (Wilmut et al., Nature 385, 810-13, 1997). The three types of cloning technologies currently in use include therapeutic cloning, recombinant DNA and reproductive cloning. Genetic engineering is viewed as a solution to a large number of problems currently confronting mankind.

Philosophical Premise

The issue of cloning is open to philosophical debate. However, the philosophical paradigm of rationalism can be legitimately applied to pursue the cloning debate. At the outset, we need to address two issues: (a) who is a rationalist? Or what is a rational paradigm? (b) What is cloning? The philosophical standpoint of rationalism stands for “any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification” (Lacey, p.286). Rationalism can also be understood as a method or theory “in which criterion of truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive” (Bourke, p.263). In other words, the rationalist position on cloning has its basis in evidence based reason.
A rational approach to the issue of cloned food must look for potential beneficial and harmful effects of cloning. The Utilitarianism is an ethical paradigm based on maximum benefit to maximum number of people. In the second chapter of Utilitarianism, Mill makes an attempt to address the objections against this moral principle. Mill states “The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure” (Mill, Chapter2). In other words, we need to identify both beneficial and harmful impacts of cloning to determine if its overall impact is beneficial to the largest number of people. What would be the impact, for instance, if genetically modified food is banned? The answers are obvious: The benefits accrued by it would be denied. There are a number of benefits that we have already mentioned. Today, the world food problem is solved thanks to biotechnology.
It might be tempting to enquire whether cloning is morally right as it entails intrusion with the original genetic structure of species. This could be examined with the help of the second formulation of the categorical imperative that Kant makes: “Act so that you treat humanity whether in your person or in that of another, always as an end and never as a means only.” In this case, we are treating humanity as an end because it is in the interest of humanity that cloning technology is being used to offer them food on a large scale. However, the same thesis will collapse if the cloning technology begins to be used to produce human clones, for human clones are exactly alike human beings in every way.

Philosophical Argument

Cloning is a part of the broader science of biotechnology. It involves manipulation of genetic structure of an organism – both plants and animals – to produce a new organism. It has led to a number of possibilities that promise to revolutionize food production in variety, nutrition, periodicity, among other possible benefits. Consequently rich nations like the U.S.A and Canada and multinational food companies see immense economic benefits through harnessing of this technology on the presumption of mass production and distribution of GM foods. However, the consumers in advanced nations have more or less rejected GM food on health and moral grounds. There are a number of acknowledged benefits of GM food like eradication of global hunger and malnutrition, eradication of pests and diseases, creation of better environment, among others, but there are no less adverse consequences known, and unknown. First of all this is an entirely new technology and its far reaching consequences remain to be studied in greater depth. It has endangered the diversity of flora and fauna; it has disturbed the genetic makeup of natural organisms that nature took millions of years to evolve and through an evolutionary process designed the best possible organism-varieties of plants and animals.
However, the cloning technology proves to be highly beneficial to mankind provided the technology continues to be used with precaution. When we scrutinize the application of the technology under the philosophical paradigms of Utilitarianism and Categorical imperative, it is shown not to conflict with rational and moral philosophical paradigms.

Works Cited

Bourke, Vernon J. Rationalism p.263 in Runes (1962)
Kant, Immanuel. Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, 1785
Lacey, A.R. A Dictionary of Philosophy, Rout ledge, London, UK, 1996
Mill, John Stuart. Utilitarianism, 1863
Wilmut I., A. Schnieke, J. McWhir, A. Kind and K. Campbell, 1997. Viable offspring derived from fetal and adult mammalian cells. Nature, 385: 810–13.

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Contemporary Philosophical Issue Term Paper. Free Essay Examples - WePapers.com. https://www.wepapers.com/samples/contemporary-philosophical-issue-term-paper/. Published Feb 22, 2023. Accessed March 28, 2024.
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