It seems likely that Reproductive cloning of an individual human is a very
thorny moral issue, but how does it relate to human survival?
There are a number of moral issues to cloning a human. Who are its parents?
Who is responsible for the clone as a child? What are those responsibilities?
What consent was there by the clone and cloned? Are there developmental
risks to cloning?
By all standards, a clone skips a step in evolution that is represented
by each generation.
It would seem that if developmental problems are just a result of cloning
adults, then cloning is by most standards a very bad thing. It would
produce nothing good and creating developmentally handicapped individuals
would almost have to be regarded as very undesirable.
Since it will be almost impossible to currently prevent the cloning of
individuals, it would seem practical to try to universally require that
any researcher attempting to do so, provide an insurance policy adequate
to cover the needs of the individual to be cloned in the event that they
have developmental or health problems as they grow and mature.
If cloning can be accomplished that creates a normal human without
developmental problems, a big if, the moral issues will be more complicated.
Who would be cloned? Sports stars, great scientists, great politicians or
perhaps even great beauties? How does that effect the non-cloned in the
ongoing competition that is life?
If cloning became fashionable, the problem of skipping each generations step
of re-combining genetics, might become significant.
It would seem that artificial development of an individuals organs for
medical reasons is not likely to bring up much more in the way of moral
issues than do other medical procedures, which actually bring up a lot
of moral issues.
What though if it becomes possible for an individual to replace their own
organs with a much 'superior' organ? Potentially, that to could thwart
evolution.