Cloning is a phenomenon that scientists use to make exact copies of living cells and genes. Dolly the sheep was a breakthrough where scientists had cloned an entire sheep using the complete genome of another animal adult. As miraculous as this may seem, there is an everlasting debate regarding the ethics of this technique. Questions rise as to whether cloning will ever been seen as right or wrong.

Why was I fascinated by this topic?

During a workshop today I came across a case study about a stem cell scientist, Woo Suk Hwang, who sparked my interest towards the debate on ethics, claimed to have utilised eggs from ‘paid donors and junior members of his team’ after a long time denying this very fact. At the time of Hwang’s research, paying donors for their eggs was not illegal in Korea but he was put in a position of jeopardy due to his ‘ethical and unlawful’ actions. 

 This raises a question of ethics as to whether it was fair for Hwang to be penalised for performing such invasive procedures on paid donors, or whether due to their being no law against it should mean that Hwang should not have to be punished.                                         

I found this interesting as there is a very broad spectrum as to what one may find right and what they may find wrong, and often we are left in a grey area of neither or. It could be argued that the procedure was unethical as an incentive behind a donation makes you question whether the women was donating her egg because she wanted to or had to. For example, it could also be seen as an easy fix out of poverty which leads onto the argument whether one with a ‘supposed to have moral high ground’ should be performing a procedure on such donors.

On the flip side, Hwang did not do something that was against the law at the time and I could argue that if incentives had not been put in place, we would have less donations and more people would suffer as they would not be able to get any treatment as there would be a lack of it.

Will there ever be an end?

It made me question whether such a case would ever come to a conclusion to whether his actions were right or wrong. Would there have to be an international law put into place for the whole world to follow? And even so, the law differentiates from ethics and many different cultures have different stances and viewpoints. In Hwang’s case, a researcher had donated her organs as she had made a mistake during the experiment setting them back months, and due to this she felt obligated to ‘ make right of a mistake’ which is a collectivist and patriotic way of thinking, which was common in South Korea. Other cultures may be more lenient with their mindset when making mistakes.

Ethics will always be a topic for debate and there will always be two opposing opinions as with Hwang’s’ case I could argue both cases and personally still be torn whether he was right or wrong. In conclusion, it may just all come down to what opinion / viewpoint is the lesser of two evils?