Ethical Issues of Safety and Individuality in Reproductive Human Cloning
Author：Johannes Sun Hsiao-chih
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The dramatic progress of experiments on cloning raises many perplexing and worrisome issues: Is the step from Dolly to human a fiction never coming true or will it be made possible in the near future? If it becomes reality, what impacts would it bring about in the ethical, legal and social dimensions? These issues become more and more urgent after the Korean scientists successfully applied the technique of SCNT to reproduce cloned human blastocysts in the year of 2004. This article focuses on two significant ethical issues of reproductive human cloning, i.e. the problems of safety and individual uniqueness. I firstly clarify the objective facts related to the ethical judgments of reproductive human cloning. Secondly, I define the issues to be explored and present my methodology. Thirdly I will introduce the fundamental ethical positions underlying various arguments for and against reproductive human cloning. And then, in the fourth and fifth parts of the article, I will deal separately with the problems of safety and individuality.