Perspectives on bioethics.
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The so-called "bioethics", fashionable today, is mostly sophistry to obscure the fact that human embryos are human beings. This holds already for the human zygote, as it embodies a complete and individualized human "entelechy": a human being in its early stage of life. Therefore experimenting on human embryos resembles closely the dealings of the infamous dr Mengele. Possibly the new biology will force upon mankind deep religious and political divisions never known before.
Cloning of the human being is not only highly controversial; in the opinion of the authors it is impossible - we are not able to reproduce human behaviour and character traits. Reproduction through cloning is limited to personal genome resources. The more important is protection of genomic characteristics as private property and taking advantage of cloning for production of the human organs directly or through xenotransplants. In this paper we present the legislation related to cloning in Poland, in the European Union and other countries. We also indicate who and why is interested in cloning.
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The principles of bioethics have been historically contingent, a product of social values, circumstances, and experience. During the early twentieth century, they rested on a doctor-knows-best autonomy that permitted physicians to perform research on human subjects with a minimum degree, if any, of informed consent. The eugenics movement of the period embraced an implicit bioethics by presuming to sterilize individuals for the sake of a larger social benefit, a practice and doctrine that helped lead to the Nazi medical experiments and death camps. After World War II, the promulgation of the Nuremberg Code failed to halt eugenic sterilization and risky human experimentation without informed consent either in civilian or military venues. However, beginning in the 1960s, these practices came under mounting critical scrutiny, partly because of the increasing attention given to individual rights. By now, it is widely understood that concern for individual rights rather than an appeal to some national good belongs at the heart of bioethics.
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The ethics must do justice to the man who can freely decide and should pose to him the proper questions that can lead to a good choice. 'Playing God' is out of the question, because the biblical God has taken the enchantment out of the creation and produced man for him to shape and keep her. The zygote is already a human being in gestation. But not all stages of gestation of man have the right to the same reverence. The end justifies the means. Reason why this growing respect should be weighed against the use and meaning of the modifying action. The goal should be human in order to have a justifiable effect. Man is not determined by his genes but conditioned by them: they are pliable. Prenatal diagnostic tests and cloning should not be allowed to lead to the moulding of an 'Ubermensch'. It is indeed not yet technologically possible. Germination technology is justifiable provided that it is safely performed. DNA-profiling for identification of criminals is allowed. If only the profile and not the DNA were kept one could consider making a profile-bank. The patenting of discoveries should not stop developing countries from getting cheap medicines (e.g. for AIDS). Not everything that is possible is also allowed. Every time the reason and the benefit should be weighed against the damage and there must be a humane authority.
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