In the United States, human cloning should be legal.

I negate "In the United States, human cloning should be legal". We define human cloning as technology used to generate a human that has the same nuclear DNA as another currently or previously existing human.

Human cloning is unsafe, because the process of cloning a human increases the risk of harm to the embryos due to the fact that there are more opportunities for failure, and therefore creates a greater risk to the cloned person throughout his or her life. According to the President’s Council on Bioethics, cloning to produce children is extremely unsafe, and therefore ought not to be attempted, and is ethically incorrect. According to Japanese cloning studies, cloned animals have compromised immune functions, higher rates of infection, tumor growth, other disorders, and they die earlier. The Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts discovered that 4% of genes in cloned mice function abnormally. Therefore, since human cloning is unsafe and ineffective, it is not ethically correct, and should not be legal.

Reproductive cloning is expensive and highly inefficient, because it almost always fails to work. According to the Human Genome Project, 90% of all cloning attempts fail to produce viable offspring, and more than 100 nuclear transfer procedures could be required to produce even one viable clone. Dolly, one of the world’s first cloned mammals, was one success out of two hundred seventy-six failures. Since nuclear transfers are expensive, and very few of them ever reach a successful cloning, it should not be legal.

Cloning in the United States should be legal.

Human cloning allows us to recreate another human being, and can be very useful. If a patient at a hospital needed an organ donor, a cloning of that organ would be able to satisfy this need. Finding a compatible organ donor can be very difficult, and by doing this those problems would be eliminated. Through this process we could save many lives.

The very practice of cloning could also help. If it was legal, researchers could learn a lot by mere observation. In turn, this could also lead to a better developed medical system in general. Why wouldn't you want that?

Cloning can also benefit in terms of the family. People who would normally be unable to have children on their own would also then be able to. Unlike adoption, the child would actually be like the parents.

Cloning is necessary for advancements in improving the quality of life.

I would like to begin by offering a brief roadmap. I will begin by refuting my opponent's contentions and then I will return to my own case.

I will begin with my opponent's first contention which states that if a patient at a hospital needs an organ donor, a cloning of that organ would be able to satisfy the need. However, I would like to point out that the process of cloning requires time, and the time it takes for an organ to reach maturity after being cloned is not short enough. A twenty-five year old who needs an organ transplant would require at least eighteen years of cloned organ growth before the organ is mature enough to be in use. In addition, organ cloning is highly expensive, and has never been successfully performed, even on more primitive animals such as rats or sheep.

My opponent's second contention states that the practice of cloning could allow an improved medical system, though he provides no evidence to support ways in which the medical system could be improved through observing the results of cloning. Therefore, this contention is rendered invalid.

The third contention that my opponent states is that it can benefit a family that is unable to have children, and unlike adoption, the child would be like the parents. However, the truth behind this is that the resulting child is not actually their child, and is not only similar to the parents, but identical to one of the parents, an exact replica, essentially an identical twin over a long age gap. The resulting being could not be considered their child, but as a copy of the parent. Cloning is expensive, and parents would most likely not be willing to pay extensive amounts of money in order to clone themselves for a child. Adoption would be preferable in these instances. In addition, cloning oneself to create a child prevents the evolution of humanity, since evolution is based upon changes within DNA. Since DNA is replicated in cloning, humans cannot evolve.

My opponent's final contention is that cloning is necessary for advancements in improving the quality of life. However, this is not true, because of the dangers of cloning as I expressed in my first contention, those that are cloned are less healthy, and are likely to die earlier than most humans. Therefore, since more people are dying earlier, this is detracting from the quality of life, and therefore cloning is not good, and should not be legal.

I would now like to return to my own case. My opponent did not refute any of my points, therefore they all still hold true. Human cloning is unsafe, as well as highly expensive and inefficient.

For these reasons, human cloning should be illegal in the United States.

My opponent has stated that human cloning is unsafe and almost always fails to work properly. It is true that cloning can cause harm to embryos, and lead to various health disorders. I acknowledge the fact that in some ways cloning can be unsafe, but I would like to point out the fact that cloning is only in its early stages. There is still much that is left to be explored, and many improvements (especially in the general safety and reliability) to be made.
My opponent has also stated that cloning is highly expensive, and inefficient. Like I have said, cloning has a lot of room for improvement since it is still in its early stages. As time goes on, human cloning will surely become more efficient. Like most new innovations, cloning is expected to be expensive at first. However, as time goes on and scientific breakthroughs in research are made, the price is expected to decrease.
Human cloning certainly has potential, and should not be ignored for these reasons.
(I will argue my case in the next round, as my opponent will be also)

I will begin this round by defending my own case, then I will move on to my opponent's contentions, and conclude with voting issues.

My opponent claims that there is still much left to be explored, and many improvements can be made in the science of cloning, because it is only in its early stages, and therefore that counters my first contention which states that cloning is unsafe and can cause harm to embryos and various health disorders. I would like to point out that my opponent does not give any evidence as to how long scientists project these improved safety modifications to take, or any evidence to show that it's even possible. And since we have no evidence to show that these changes are coming anytime soon, it is not logical to say that human cloning should be legal before the improvements to human cloning have been made. Therefore, as of right now, human cloning should not be legal. I would also like to point out that my opponent conceded the fact that human cloning can cause harm to embryos and lead to health disorders, therefore making human cloning unsafe.

In response to my second contention, my opponent stated once again that "as time goes on, human cloning will surely become more efficient", and provides zero evidence to support his claim. He also states that breakthroughs in human cloning research can still be made, and therefore human cloning should be legal. And yet, he still acknowledges that human cloning now is expensive and inefficient. His only counter-argument is that in the future, things could change. But before those changes happen, as I stated previously, human cloning is not ethically correct because it causes harm to the embryos and leads to a diminished quality of life because of known increased susceptibility to diseases. Therefore, human cloning should not be legal.

I would like to move on to my opponent's case.

My opponent gave no defense to any of his contentions in Round 2, and therefore all of my Round 2 refutations still hold. But I would like to make a few more additional points in response to my opponent's first contention.

My opponent's first contention states that patients in hospitals can get organ donations through therapeutic cloning. In Round 2, I pointed out that the organ would not be prepared in time, and that it is incredibly unsuccessful and unlikely to succeed. I would also like to point out that therapeutic cloning, defined as cloning with the intention of "harvesting stem cells that can be used to study human development and to potentially treat disease". I clarify that in therapeutic cloning, which is what my opponent is referring to, only the organ in need of transplant is cloned. However, this violates the original definitions set in Round 1, where I define human cloning as "technology used to generate a human that has the same nuclear DNA as another currently or previously existing human". As an entire human is not being created in therapeutic cloning, it does not fit the definition for this debate, and therefore this argument is invalid.

Once again, as my opponent did not defend his case, all of my refutations from Round 2 are still intact.

I would like to conclude with voting issues. I strongly urge you to vote Con on this debate because I responded to all of my opponent's contentions and he did not defend his case, I pointed out the flaws in current human cloning, and my opponent conceded the fact that human cloning is unsafe. For these reasons, the Con should win this debate.

I will start by defending my case, then I will debate my opponents contentions, and finally discuss voting.
My opponent states that I have no evidence for my claims of "human cloning will surely become more efficient" and "There is still much that is left to be explored, and many improvements to be made". I like to point out the fact that these improvements have not been made (yet), and that in time they will likely prove true. To support this, and to prove that it is indeed logical, I would like to relate it to another invention like the automobile or the many recent discoveries of improving health (like getting more sleep, a proper diet, low stress levels, and exercise). These discoveries are two examples of the many improvements that can be made. Lastly, I would like to relate this to the invention of the light bulb. Thomas Edison had failed thousands of times in the making of the light bulb, and if he had given up, it may never have been invented. The light bulb was surely a revolutionary invention, and if we give up now, we would never know what we would be missing.

Now I will move onto my opponent's case.
My opponent has stated that my arguments dealing with therapeutic cloning do not match the definition of cloning that was given in the beginning of the debate. My opponent had said cloning is "Technology used to generate a human that has the same nuclear DNA as another currently or previously existing human". I would like to argue that although it may not match the definition exactly, it is still considered to be a major component of the main topic of cloning. Furthermore, the main topic is more important than a general definition. In any case that you would disagree, I would argue that neither I, nor my opponent had even noticed. This proves that it is simply unimportant compared to the relevancy in the overall debate.

Finally, I would like to deal with voting.
I strongly believe you should vote Pro because I have substantially defended, and argued my case. I debated fairly and didn't forget defend my case in the earlier rounds because I had been proven wrong, but instead because it would have been unfair to my opponent to defend my case for an entire round longer. For these reasons, Pro should win this debate.