Iranian Journal of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine

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Animal cloning is one of the animal biotechnology branches. Although this method has been used since 1950, but many have paid attention to cloning by birth of Dally. Because the way of Dolly production was completely different from other existed methods in cloning.
This new-found and unprecedented method has been called "Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer" (SCNT), so scientists have eagerly paid attention to many profitable abilities such as, duplicating valued animals traits, preventing endangered animal species from extinction or even restoration of extinct animals, producing high quality food and drug by using cloning as a way for propagating transgenic animals.
Even though all these instances sound good and encourage use of SCNT, in fact, none of them has practically become feasible so far. The main reason for this claim is that in spite of whole attempts taken for producing cloned animals, the method still is under debate and the hit-rates of this method has been kept considerably low and disappointing.
Because of several reasons, we cannot ignore this recognized obstacle as low efficiency. Along with this issue, there are various sub-effects, which put human and animals life at risk. Not only the High rates of miscarriages or birth of genetically abnormal animals, causes many different health-oriented problems for human and animals, but also it can directly and indirectly endanger human and animals welfare. Nowadays hordes of legal and ethical criticism around SCNT in reaction to these portentous signs, invite scientists to be more scrupulous and patient in its broad enforcement.
Taken together, although at first glance SCNT seems to be promising, it's usefulness has been diminished because of difficulties in its application in broad spectrum. Therefore SCNT should be kept under surveillance and use of it must be just limited to very important and critical cases such as medical purposes, as long as all due observations and cautions take into account before implementing.

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Generally, when moral values and ethical principles are concerned, human beings are considered as the sole subject of these fields. It is then concluded that the only living creatures with some privileges and obligation towards their own bodies and also, towards their other human counterparts are humans. An emerging issue, particularly in the past recent three decades, has been the expansion of the ethical community to be inclusive of other living creatures, namely animals. Novel branches of science such as animal ethic are increasingly challenging the traditional view of ethics and aim to include animals in ethical community. In this article, a descriptive study and systematic review of literate was carried out on different aspects of animal ethics and the specific codes applicable to animals was studied in order to shed some light on the animal ethics and on what basis they are subjects to ethical considerations. As animals are proven to have the ability of perception and demonstrated to be able to feel and differentiate good and bad experiences, they are considered as being the subject of ethical considerations. Therefore, human beings should be responsible for their behavior towards animals in different aspects.

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Fertility preservation consists of a set of procedures that help people maintain their reproductive ability in order to have a genetic child in the future. Nowadays, these procedures are widely accepted as long as they fall within the two categories of medical or social justification. In the first category, patients may lose their fertility due to diseases or treatment-related complications, while, in the second, healthy patients wish to preserve their ability to have children in the future for social and personal reasons. Since these procedures are considered invasive, many questions and criticisms have been raised about their application in the case of healthy women who seek them merely on account of aging.In this descriptive-analytic study, ethical issues were retrieved from books, papers, international guidelines, theses, declarations and instructions, and even some weekly journals, using keywords related to fertility preservation such as embryo cryopreservation, oocyte cryopreservation, and women’s reproductive autonomy. In cases of medical necessities, fertility preservation is considered acceptable and consistent with the principle of beneficence, which is the most important principle of medical ethics. As for cases that only have social justifications, some argue that they contradict the principle of non-maleficence. Nevertheless, a large number of feminists and scholars believe in women’s reproductive autonomy and therefore consider them ethical, provided that certain conditions are observed.

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