The Science and Ethics of Human Cloning

Before you begin your quest I want you to get out a piece of paper and draw a line down the center. Then I want you to write Reproductive Cloning on the left and Therapeutic Cloning on the right.  Then I want you to divide those two areas in two and write "pros" and "cons" on either side of that line. These are the two areas of human cloning that we will be concerned with and you will need to write down every pro and con of each type of cloning to keep track of it all.

There are many terrific websites that you could visit to start this trip but the best on is the Human Genome Project site. This site will give you an overview of what cloning is and what it is not. It is not as biased as some of the other sites I will give you.

The second thing I want you to read is a scientific commentary from the periodical Differentiation. This article will give you a little more of the pros and cons of cloning in detail.

Third, I would like you to go to the Clonaid site. This is the company that insisted in 2002 that they had created the first human clone. Here is their website and the claims that they are making about current cloning.

Lastly, I would like you to read this article from Globalchange that tells the other side of that story. Do you now believe that Cloniad can do what they say or not?

Now I would like you to go to at least two other sites to investigate on your own. If you are against cloning try a search engine like "google" or "yahoo" and type in something like "Illegal cloning". If you are for cloning you can try typing in something like "support human cloning". You can also try any combination of words that you think will work. There are a lot of great websites out there and I want you to find two to back up your claims that cloning is good or bad. You will be put in a team with those on the same side of the argument and we will have a class debate. Everyone must speak in the debate and you must have your two websites backing up your position on a piece of paper for us to view if asked. Your team will be given 15 minutes to review the points you have to make (bring your pro/con sheets with you) and decide on what order you will go in. You (as part of a team) will be graded based on the rubric on the next page, so make sure that you will be an asset to your team!