ETHICAL ISSUES IN GENETIC ENGINEERING AND HUMAN CLONING

Abstract

Some of the most essential and disputable innovations of the modern biomedical science are genetic engineering and cloning of people.  New technologies transform the sense of being alive and they shape what we are, creating prominently tough moral, social and legal questions that should be analyzed in a logical manner.In the current study, a multi-dimensional ethical decision-making framework with case-based reasoning, stakeholders analysis, and a novel model, the Ethical Impact Score (EIS) will be utilized.  We examined such case studies as CRISPR-based genome editing and therapeutic cloning by using weighted ethical considerations.  A five point system was developed to analyze every case with regard to moral concepts like autonomy, consent and fairness.As the results indicate, the moral complexity of various genetic technology applications may be extremely different.  The high EIS values were obtained in incidences where the embryos were manipulated or cloned to give birth a factor that implies more moral risks.  On the contrary, the EIS values were not high in the case of therapeutic interventions, thus making them more socially acceptable than their clinical advantages.  Stakeholder research indicated that scientific optimism is immensely different to the pessimism by people. Such a discrepancy exists primarily because of culturally, legally, and religiously contingent forms with which people perceive risk.  The policy analysis revealed that the regulations were inconsistent; this indicated that the world was not in unison.This paper concludes that there is a lot of potential use of genetic engineering in treating diseases and using it to enhance human beings but the way it has been guided ethically is not good yet and is not well-structured.  What we require are harmonized regulations bringing together ethical propensing and scientific advancement at this very moment.  The proposed Ethical Impact Score presents a scalable and evidence-based future-oriented framework of making bioethical decisions.  In order to ensure that these technologies are allowed to develop responsibly and not harm human dignity and social justice in the face of impulsive biotechnological development, installing proactive and inclusive oversight mechanisms will be very crucial.