Human Cloning Debate When Frankenstein Was Adapted Essay

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Human Cloning Debate

When Frankenstein was adapted for stage in 1823 the production's title was Presumption; or, The Fate of Frankenstein. A Victorian audience was concerned with the theme of a man's ambition to replace God by creating a new species. Equal emphasis was placed on this aspect of the novel in the 1831 introduction of Frankenstein, "It is Mary Shelly's critique of where such highly abstracted creative powers can lead when put in a 'realizing' scientific context and then driven along by 'lofty ambition' and 'high destiny' (Shelley, 2004, 204) that we see in the pages of Frankenstein" The novel was controversial in that it went against the traditional religious ideas of the time; Victorian morality held that God was the Almighty Creator. However, modern readers, with less restricted moral boundaries to those of the Victorians, likely see Victor's main crime within the novel more the perverse way in which the creation is carried out and more importantly Victor's failure to nurture the offspring; his crime is against the traditional framework of the family (Feldman and Scott-Kilvert, 1987).

Position Statement- At the very essence of the Frankenstein myth is the idea that humans have the technology and wisdom to create or duplicate life. This idea, cloning, is neither new, nor mysterious -- it is simply the biological process of producing replicas of organisms through other means than sexual reproduction.

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In the United States, consumption of meat and other products derived from cloning was approved in December of 2006, with no special labeling required. However, although there are two types of human cloning typically discussed: therapeutic or using adult cells for use in medicine, and reproductive, involving cloning human beings. In the United States, House Bill 4808 was introduced in March, 2010, banning federal funding from human cloning. That bill has yet to be passed, and the issues remain quite controversial (HR4808, 2010).

Questions

1. What sort of boundaries of parenthood and social responsibility are challenged by cloning? At the heart of the debate on cloning there are two completely different and divergent issues: philosophical/social and biological. Parenthood may be defined as both -- a conceived child by sexual congress has parents. Socially, however, biology does not make parents. Witness adopted children who never know their parents, or the very common issue of homes in which children are raised by non-biological parents because of divorce or death. Parenting issues go back to the nature vs. nurture issue, and a cloned human would likely have certain genetic predispositions based on the biological donor (traits) that would be mitigated somewhat based on the style of parenting, locale,….....

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