To Clone or Not
to Clone
February 16, 2004
South Korean scientists described last Thursday
how they cloned several human embryos and extracted valuable
stem cells from one.
"If it turns out to be true, it's a nice sep
forward," said Dr. Bob Goldstein of the Juvenile Diabetes
Foundation. "My reaction is, basically, Wow," said Dr. Richard
Rawlins, an embryologist who is director of the assisted
reproduction laboratories at Rush University Medical Center.
"It's a landmark paper."
The reason so many researchers are excited is
because cloning would give them the capability to clone a
patients cells to make embryonic stem cells that are an exact
genetic match of the patient. Then those cells, patients hope,
could be turned into replacement tissue to treat or cure their
disease without provoking rejection from the body's immune
system. In other words, if you had, say, Parkinson's disease or
diabetes, a plug of skin could be taken from your body and used
to grow perfectly matched tissue or even organs to treat your
disease.
In light of the potential benefits, why would
anyone oppose human cloning? Before answering that question,
it's important to note that the South Korean scientists said
their achievement showed the need for an immediate global ban on
cloning "to make babies." In other words, a distinction is made
between cloning for the purpose of harvesting and cloning for
reproduction.
All such cloning is morally wrong for several
reasons. First, life begins at the moment of conception. If left
to grow in a woman's uterus that cloned embryo would grow into a
baby. At 21 days its heart would beat. It is morally wrong to
take the life of another innocent and unprotected human being.
Second, God is the Creator, the Sustainer and Lord of all life.
All human beings are made in the "image of God" and that image
is to be protected not experimented with by researchers. If man
is not made in God's image, there is no good reason why mankind
should be viewed as special. Human life is devalued to the place
where it is nothing more than cells in a Petri dish.
Third, it is morally wrong to create an entire
sub-race of human beings for the sole purpose of harvesting
their cells or organs to improve the health of other human
beings who possess more power and intelligence.
In 1946 and 1947, Leo Alexander, a Boston
psychiatrist, was consultant to the Secretary of War and on duty
with the office of Chief of Counsel for War Crimes in Nuremberg.
In writing about how German physicians could participate in
genocide and the barbaric experimentation on the unfortunate
minorities in the Nazi grip, he wrote: "It started with the
attitude basic in the euthanasia movement, that there is such a
thing as life not worthy to be lived."
For those of us who believe in God, all life is worthy to be
lived. And no researcher has the right to create life for the
sole purpose of harvesting from it so others can benefit.
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