CLONING TO BRING BACK A CHILD Katherine Gordon of Great Falls, Mont., whose 17-year-old daugh ter, Emily, was killed by a drunk driver five years ago, says she be came obsessed with bringing a part of her daughter back in some way. Spurred by the news of
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CLONING TO BRING BACK A CHILD Katherine Gordon of Great Falls, Mont., whose 17-year-old daugh ter, Emily, was killed by a drunk driver five years ago, says she be came obsessed with bringing a part of her daughter back in some way. Spurred by the news of the birth of the cloned sheep Dolly, she had her daughter’s cells frozen and stored for possible future cloning. Now she’s resigned herself to th e fact that the technology won’ t be available in time to help her bear Emily’s clone, as she’s now 42. But she says that if it were possible in the next couple of years, she would do it. … Dr. William Hurlbut, a bioethicist at Stanford University and m ember of President Bush’s Council on Bioet hics, urges parents to look a cloning from the perspective of the child.
“I don’t think anyone should have to live their life in the footsteps of someone else,” he says. … But Gregory Pence, a pro-cloning bioethicist at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, a nd author of “Who’s Af raid of Human Cloni ng?” defends that choice. “People hav e replacement ch ild all the tim e. It’s as good a reason as any to have a child sexually. Why are people c reating children anyway? To create a sens e of family, someone to take c are of them when they’re older. There are many self-centered reasons p eople have kids, parents just normally don’t have to [spell] out thes e reasons.” (Course Textbook, p. 408-409.) Using a total of 225-250 words, you must answer the following questions related to the previous case. Justify your answers. If Katherine Gordon could give birth to a clone of her deceased daughter, should she? Is grief over the loss of a child a morally legitimate reason for wanting to clone him or her? Is there a morally relevant difference between sexually producing a child to replace a lost one and producing a child through cloning for the some reason?
