[Askel5]

Cloning, I think, is important because it represents a very clear, powerful, and immediate example in which we are in danger of turning procreation into manufacture, sometimes referred to as "designer babies," in which parents and scientists work their private eugenic visions on the child-to-be and impose it on members of the next generation.

A child, therefore, ceases to be welcomed as a gift, as a mysterious stranger whose genetic independence from the parents is an emblem of the kind of independence that all of our children are raised to acquire and instead becomes a being to work out the particular vision that the parents have.

And so, it seems to me, part of the reason that this bothers people is that it strikes them as a kind of degrading of parenthood and a perversion of the right relation between parents and children.

Thoughts?

[Pistias]

People find it hard to articulate their concerns in these ways, but they sense that what we're really talking about are efforts to redesign what a human being shall be.

Trying to wield the power of God is quite possibly the most disastrous thing a created being can do--both because our wisdom does not equal such power, and because how can one conceive of a pride more heinous than that?

[Dumb_Ox]

^

[Anthem]

The segments that you quoted, Askel5, were also the parts of the interview that I found most thought provoking, reaching the crux of the issue (except for the last bit accusing an intellectual postering prior to appliying the rubber stamp, a bit of Askel's own rubber stamp -- GUILTY -- in action :)> ... didn't get to the link yet). Creating a human life for a purpose is fraught with the dangers of a predetermined hierarchy, leaving some to be created for the purposes of others. An issue like this has situations that are so close to the line, like the parents who have a child because of a high probability that its DNA will produce some healing abilities to a suffering sibling, as Kass recognizes, they must be examined so closely that the black of the line reveals that it has white areas in it. Confusion abounds as an almost Talmudic arcania is bandied about -- which is what we humans do, as much in public as in very formal institutions like the Catholic Church, other religions, philosophy, and now the formal opinions of "Bioethicists". Kass seems to me to be well qualified.

I think that differences do emerge in these debates. The parents who have a child to help another in itself has fine grains to it. Whether the purpose is deemed just there is still the issue of whether they intervene to have the genes actually selected by a technologically advanced conception.

Sat. afternoon bump... more later. Thanks for all the replies and bumps.