Stem Cell Research and Cloning

Race and gender issues can influence medical treatment as many researchers have shown. The study by Benjamins and Whitman (2014), for example, showed that ethnic and racial discrimination is found in health care settings and results in health care services being limited to certain groups. The study surveyed 1700 individuals of white, black, Mexican, and Puerto Rican descent and found that 1/4th of respondents stated that they had experienced health care discrimination, and the skew showed that the discrimination was race-related. The types of discrimination cited by the respondents included not receiving the care they required, and not receiving quality of care.
Another study, this one by Grace, Kara, Kennedy and McDonald (2014), found that racial disparities exist in pediatric kidney transplantation. The study took place in New Zealand and focused on what types of patients were most likely to be receive a kidney transplant before others in the same need. The sample consisted of 215 patients undergoing renal replacement therapy and the findings showed that the highest percentage of patients to receive the needed transplant were Asians and Europeans while Pacific and Maori patients were only half as likely as Europeans to receive the same transplant. In other words, there was a clear racial and ethnic bias in terms of which patients were administered to first in this part of the world.
Many other studies exist that have examined the impact of racism and gender discrimination in health care. It is a problem because medical professionals have an obligation to treat people fairly without bias no matter what their race, gender or sexual orientation. This is part of their Hippocratic Oath. Whenever bias plays a role in determining the extent to which health care will be received, it is objectionable. A good example is the Tuskegee Experiments, in which black patients were not treated for syphilis because health researchers wanted to monitor the effect of the disease on the human body over time. This was cruel and unusual and never should have happened.
I also think there is a class bias that can occur as well; indeed, the entire Eugenics Movement got off to a start in the West because of upper class WASPS (white Anglo-Saxon Protestants) wanting to cull the herd and purge society of undesirables, who could not justify their own existence based on what they earned and/or contributed to society (Corbett, 2017). Health care should not be denied anyone based on race, ethnicity, gender or class. It should be provided to one and all by health care professionals who have been trained to deliver quality care in a non-discriminatory manner. The fact that there is a history of discrimination all over the world suggests that people need to overcome some inherent flaw in the human character which can prevent one from being fair and equitable in all treatment. To guard against discrimination and bias, providers must be conscious of how they approach all people and adopt a plan that they can implement that will help them to be fair at all times.
Fidelity as a traditional biomedical virtue is one of the most fundamental aspects of providing quality care because upon it is based the idea of the Hippocratic Oath. When one is faithful to the oath that one has taken as a health care professional, one will be faithful to all of one’s patients and not show bias or discrimination. This should be a part of one’s policy and it should really be institutionalized so that fairness and equality of care are absolutes that both patients and providers can feel confident will be the outcome no matter the setting.
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The moral issue of whether we should ever clone human beings is one that must be discussed in this day and age because science has made so much advancement in this department, it may eventually be necessary to actually answer this question from a policy point of view. What is morally problematic about the issue of cloning human beings is that it is playing with the very fundamental issue of human life. So many warnings have been given on this subject—and the most dramatic and literary of them is of course the novel by Mary Shelley entitled Frankenstein. It is a book about a doctor who wants to re-create human life, but does so in a way that raises deep questions about morality and philosophy and even theology. Where does life come from and what is the human soul? How sacred and special is this life, and should people have the right to end it when they see fit?
Issues about life and regenerating an entire human are very controversial and it is worrisome enough that it may be necessary to ban cloning of humans altogether. If cloning were to be allowed, very troubling moral and ethical issues could arise within our society as a result. Questions of rights for the clone would have to be addressed. Questions of citizenry and care (is the clone to be used just for harvesting—if so, does this violate basic human rights?—after all, the clone would be human). If cloning were allowed, society (which is already very divided on moral and political and social issues) would become even more polarized: some would view cloning as good and others would view it as a violation of moral and natural law.
There would certainly be the potential for clones to be exploited—especially were a black market to arise wherein cloned human beings were trafficked. Human trafficking is already a problem today (even without clones to think about) and if humans were cloned, it would raise issues about human organ harvesting—clones being developed in insecure sites where there is no regulation and where the potential for abuses could be very high. In short, there are far too many concerns regarding the nature of human life and the extent to which life should be protected to really view cloning as anything but a danger.
What makes a clone different from naturally occurring identical twins is just that—twins are naturally produced; clones are not. Bearing twins is a very human experience. Cloning is more scientific than it is human or natural, in this respect. It crosses taboos that many people still consider to be sacred.
The idea of a clone being deliberately made brain dead so that the original can harvest its organs as its own give out is actually even more disturbing. It seems very selfish, too: why create life just to destroy it or to act like a parasite, using it as a host so that you may live? This idea seems very parasitic. People should be willing to accept the fact that death is part of life: creating another you yet depriving it of a brain so that you might use its body parts as yours decompose seems perverse and inhumane.
One could argue that the original has a right to copy his own DNA, but we are not talking about copying music from one file to another. We are talking about human life. DNA is passed on to children in procreation. Creation is a collaborative function by natural design. People are not autonomous: we depend on communities. Were we too start acting like leeches and justifying it by asserting our “rights” as though we were talking about a material object, we are in danger of losing our humanity. People forget that humans are composed of body and soul.

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The issue of stem cell research follows along in the same footsteps as the issue of cloning. The promise of stem cell research is that it says it can help to re-grow organs for people who are in need of a replacement. However, we are still talking about human life and shades of life, and what the morality of this type of situation is. There is not much respect for human life in this day and age, it sometimes seems. What with endless wars in the Middle East and other parts of the world, all the casualties and loss of life—people get desensitized to how special and sacred life is. To treat it like it is a used car that can be used for parts is very callous. Just because you can replicate human life in a laboratory does not mean that you should. There are ethical concerns that should be considered.
Stem cell research deals with using the embryos of aborted fetuses because this is the best place to obtain stem cells, but there are other ways to obtain them. Since the issue of abortion is controversial and polarizing, this is all the more reason why stem cell research is controversial. Many pro-life advocates say that by using the stem cells of aborted babies, scientists are showing little regard for human life. Even though scientists say the opposite and state that they have great regard for human life, which is why they are doing their research, the issue is still very thorny.
There are ethical considerations to be made. If an unwanted baby is considered in the same way as brain-dead clone, we are taking a very callous look at life. We are saying these human beings do not have rights and that they are not special and should not be protected. It is a very slippery slope that can lead one to make all sorts of decisions about who should have the right to live and who should be locked away or killed. It is really no different from the question of eugenics and the racism and classism that fostered that movement. If people think racism, sexism and classism are bad, why do they not object to infanticide or to the idea of a clone being less human than the original? People seem to see only what they want to see. They are not interested in the logical or philosophical implications of their actions or beliefs. A lot of the times their actions are purely self-centered.
Stem cell research should be regulated so that it does not abuse human life. If a fetus is used to harvest stem cells, this should be seen as an abuse of human life. Once one begins to see a baby as a potential crop—a source of life that can be harvested for use elsewhere, then we are entering into an inhuman world, where some humans are better than others. This is the type of idea that Orwell warned us about in Animal Farm, when he wrote sarcastically that all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others. We like to say that we believe in equality, but our actions do not always bear it out. If we did believe in equality and if we did believe in rights for all, why would we help to kill life or to prevent life from developing fully? We sometimes act like life is such a curse instead of working to fix the problems that make life hard, we just look to preventing life from even happening and let the problems go on.
The problem here is that people should stop focusing so much on themselves and start focusing on how they can help others and transform environments into better situations, where people will be happy to bring new life into this world. They also need better philosophies to help them be more accepting of the realities of this life—namely that people age and die.
References
Benjamins, M., Whitman, S. (2014). Relationships between discrimination in health
care and health care outcomes among four race/ethnic groups. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 37: 402-413.
Corbett, J. (2017). The rise of eugenics. Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=218&v=EwZ8PDyHCr4
Grace, B.S., Kara, T., Kennedy, S. E., McDonald, S. P. (2014). Racial disparities in
pediatric kidney transplantation in New England. Pediatr Transplant, 18: 689-697.