“If you or your loved ones are stricken with an illness and your only hope of being cured is therapeutic cloning, will you go for it? Why?”

Yes, I will go for it. Buddhism's stand on therapeutic cloning is that if the stem cells obtained from the embyros are intended to be used for saving lives or finding cures for diseases, then it is acceptable. As a Buddhist, one might say that I would naturally be inclinded towards supporting such a stand. However, I would like to make it clear that I do not support the stand blindly, for I have made an independent assessment of the logic behind the stand and found it to be rational, logical and yet morally sound. Other religious groups have differing stands on the issue of therapuetic cloning. For example, the Catholics are strongly opposed to therapeutic cloning as they believe that life begins at the instant of conception and thus destroying embyros is tantamount to murder.

So much for the religious and moral viewpoints, now let's consider the issue from a scientific viewpoint. If science is to make progress, we must be daring to try new things and explore the unknown, but of course we must also be rational and exhibit good judgement in our quest to discover the unknown. Thus, science should not always give in to moral and religious opposition. As history have shown, religious views are not always correct. Take Galileo for example, he was killed because he believed that the Earth revolved around the Sun while the Catholic Church thought otherwise. Thus, my point is that science should not always give in to moral and religious viewpoints. Therefore, despite what others might say about therapeutic cloning, I will still support it and use it if need be.


(Definition of therapeutic cloning: Therapeutic cloning is a technique that would be used to produce cloned embryos, but only to create stem cells that can in turn be used to repair damaged or defective tissue in the parent of the cloned cells. Such stem cells could theoretically be used to grow replacement livers or hearts (or any of a variety of organs) for transplant without fear of rejection. They might be used to create healthy nerve cells for people with Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease. Skin cells could be derived from cloned stem cells for burn victims.)