Posted on 01/19/2008 2:07:26 AM PST by InterestedQuestioner
"Scientists at a California company reported yesterday that they had created the first mature cloned human embryos from single skin cells ....Creation of the embryos -- grown from cells taken from the company's chief executive and one of its investors -- also offered sobering evidence that few, if any, technical barriers may remain to the creation of cloned babies."
-snip-
Five of the new embryos grew in laboratory dishes to the stage that fertility doctors consider ready for transfer to a woman's womb...
----snip----
"The closely held company hopes to make embryos that are clones, or genetic twins, of patients, then harvest stem cells from those embryos and grow them into replacement tissues.... ---snip----
" "I'd really like to believe it, but I'm not sold yet," said Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) in Worcester, Mass. He said the report did not show the results of molecular tests that scientists typically do to prove that the cloning process was complete....
The work is the latest evidence, however, that the field is recovering from the scientific and public relations debacle of 2005, when similar claims by South Korean scientists proved to have been fabricated."
-----snip----- "This study seems to confirm that human cloning . . . is technically possible," said Richard Doerflinger of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. "It does not show that a viable or normal embryonic stem cell line can be derived this way.... It only tells us that these questions are more urgent than ever."
------snip------
"They (the egg donors) are the heroes in this," Wood said. "Think about it. You're spending $25,000 [trying to get pregnant], and you're giving some of those eggs away." "
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
This is an article claiming a breakthrough in cloning. It is unclear as to whether or not the clones would be viable if implanted in a woman’s uterus. Nonetheless, it is evidence that we will eventually face a public debate over human cloning. I’m pinging a number of you who have demonstrated good judgement, clarity, and equanimity in discussions related to ethics and morality. I would be very interested in your thoughts on this topic, particularly with regards to the ethics of cloning human beings.
The chief arguments that I have seen against cloning have been that it separates sexuality and procreation. That’s a tough argument to make in today’s world, where procreation and sexuality have been separated by contraception and abortion.
Enslavement and conquest of indigenous peoples has always been preceded by the propaganda that they are not "fully human" anyway. Anytime that you see someone as less then human it becomes very easy to see them as property.
History is filled with examples that we just don't learn from, Ante bellum America with the enslavement of Africans, the destruction of the Indian people, The Holocaust.
This plain out just scares me on both moral and religious grounds. From the religious point of view I have several questions.
1) Will this new "being" have a soul?
2) If it does have a soul will it be the same one as the original or different?
3) What happens at death if the souls are the same?
Hi Verga,
You raise some interesting questions. The clone would be a separate individual. Those in favor of human cloning have argued that this is essentially a “delayed identical twin.” That’s at best a rough analogy, but we could expect the cloned person to be at least as different from the nuclear DNA donor as an identical twin would be.
Since this is a separate individual, I know of no reason to believe he would not have unique soul.
Are the days of Noah reemerging? The way we’re going, the Nephilim may walk the earth again...
We are certainly being confronted with major ethical challenges.
Geneis 6:9
These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.
“perfect in his generations” could also be translated “pure in his lineage” or genetic makeup. Genesis 6 talks about the genetic corruption of mankind by the ‘sons of God’, fallen heavenly beings who plotted to overtake the leadership of humanity, and corrupt the ‘seed of the woman’ in Genesis 3:15. Trippy stuff.
The failure of our society to accept a moral argument doesn't make the argument wrong. However, there are other approaches to the issue. For instance, all forms of artificial reproduction tend to place children outside of families with a married mother and father. Being reared by one's own mother and father in a marital family is the strongest factor in future success, in our country.
Other issues include the exploitation of egg "donors" and the potential for abuse of the children, especially if genetic manipulation inclines society to view them (as posts above suggested) as less than fully human.
As a side note, I'm less than fully persuaded by the claimed scientific breakthrough discussed here. These claims have proved false before.
I agree, from a strictly scientific vantage point, a cautious skepticism is probably the most reasonable approach to this report. At least one other researcher who looked at photos of the embryos said they did not look healthy.
Only the rich will be able to afford that and they already have a servant class for their own use.
Its probably cheaper to pay servants than to buy, feed, and house clones.
“The failure of our society to accept a moral argument doesn’t make the argument wrong.”
Ever pithy. That sounds like a good starting point. The arguments that I have seen so far object to the means of cloning, and to potential abuses. Unfortunately, I don’t think that the potential abuse of some cloned humans can be used to argue morally against all cloning. Likewise, some of the issues related to process, such as the high mortality among the embryos, are potentially solvable with technical advancement.
We are looking at the same arguments as we would use against in vitro fertilization. It seems to me that there should be additional concerns involved in cloning.
That’s interesting. It sounds like you are reading the King James translation of the Bible. The RSV translation renders Genesis 6:9 as “These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation; Noah walked with God.” I understand that to be a moral comparison between Noah and the other people who lived during his time.
I don't think cloning would pertain to that particular verse.
Actually, the translation doesn’t matter if you look at the meaning of the original Hebrew words.
Greek is very precise, while Hebrew words can have a range of connotations, depending on context and such. In this case, morality was tied to genetic disposition. The overarching plan of satan was the corruption of Adam’s bloodline, preventing the emergence of a perfect human sacrifice (Jesus) to undo the imperfection of Adam.
For more weird satanic genetic shenanigans, see also Joshua’s conquest of Canaan, the elimination of all women, children, cattle, etc. among the Amalekites. There were reasons for that- notably the practices of Canaanite religion such as Molech worship, Ashtoreth worship, the treatment of babies as sacrifice, etc., and their relationship to genetic alteration.
Goliath wasn’t just a big boy- he was a Nephilim.
I'm not sure why there would be distinct moral issues raised by cloning, as opposed to other forms of artificial reproduction. As was mentioned above, a clone (assuming it's a fully human clone, rather than a mixture of human with other genetic material) is in a sense a twin of the DNA contributor. How is the clone's production morally different from a person's using frozen embryoes and a rent-a-uterus to have genetic identical twins born years apart?
IVF processes already include pre-implantation sex-selection and other genetic selection, for example to produce a child who can be a tissue donor for another family member. The potential for additional genetic manipulation in IVF, as well as selection, is already available, perhaps already in use.
I agree that there's a creep-out factor with cloning that doesn't arise as obviously with IVF and other artificial reproductive techniques, but it's possible that we've just become so accustomed to these that we've forgotten how creepy it is!
That sexuality and procreation are divided, so to speak, "out there" does nt make it right for them to be divided "in here" in our hearts and deeds.
We all, society and each of us, suffer from the fact that "They" have divided the two, and devalue persons and the gift of sexuality. But we will suffer more spiritual harm if we take part.
It is bad to tolerate the Nazis killing Jews. It is worse to take part.
For the rest, read or reread "That Hideous Strength"
'Who is called Sulva? What road does she walk? Why is the womb barren on one side? Where are the cold marriages?'
Ransom replied, 'Sulva is she whom mortals call the Moon. She walks in the lowest sphere. The rim of the world that was wasted goes through her. Half of her orb is turned towards us and shares our curse. Her other half looks to Deep Heaven; happy would he be who could cross that frontier and see the fields on her further side. On this side, the womb is barren and the marriages cold. There dwell an accursed people, full of pride and lust. There when a young man takes a maiden in marriage, they do not lie together, but each lies with a cunningly fashioned image of the other, made to move and to be warm by devilish arts, for real flesh will not please them, they are so dainty (delicati) in their dreams of lust. Their real children they fabricate by vile arts in a secret place.'
The question is, what is the appropriate punishment for the cloners. My proposal is
The lab’s assets should be sold at a public auction, the money given to an orphanage, and the cloner’s personal net worth transferred to be kept in trust for that poor baby. The cloner should go to jail till the baby grows up and decides whether to execute him, keep in jail, or release him.
Should the baby die for lack of implantation or any other reasons, the cloner will have to remain in jail indefinitely.
A society that allows such stuff to happen should do national penance. Perhaps, a massive foreign aid to war orphans might appease God.
Thank you for your thoughtful post. I’m trying to understand this from an ethical point of view.
Is the ethical basis for opposing IVF that it separates the unitive and procreative aspects of sexuality?
Your post makes the clear point that cloning is a gravely serious issue.
I think it’s important that we be able to discuss ethics in a strictly secular matter—that is, that we appeal to ethical values in a way that can reach all men and women of good will, regardless of their religious affiliation.
With abortion, we can logically argue that homicide is unethical. In this case, however, we don’t necessarily have a set of shared ethical values to which we can appeal. The Catholic Church is saying something radically different from the secular society with regards to sexuality and reproduction. The Catholic Church is placing a value on sexuality that simply doesn’t exist in secular conversation.
We'll have to consult a theologist, although whether we have souls to begin with is not a matter of total agrement among theologists, so we'll have to pick a theologist that thinks we do if there is one somewhere willing to advise us.
I think my reasoning was done strictly from the Natural Law standpoint.
The cloner has committed a serious tort against the baby: if the embryo dies, that is the tort already, and if the baby lives, that is a baby from whose creation the hand of God was blocked. He was deprived of unique genetic makeup and of a mother. Think of how your individuality is dear to you, and then think how would you like that individuality to be severely, irrevocably, and intentionally impaired.
Those “scientists” should be taken to the first wall and shot, in my personal opinion. The only part the Church played in my #16 was making it more charitable.
That’s a very good point. We shouldn’t abandon ethical behavior or ethical arguments simply because some forms of immoral behavior are considered acceptable or even expected. I often feel that ethical arguments are dismissed as being impractical and overly idealistic. It simply becomes much harder to take moral precepts seriously when immoral alternatives are easily available and and culturally acceptable. Perhaps we need to make a distinction between human ideals and moral realities. I suppose the argument begins by stating that evil exists, and it’s not simply a failure to achieve ideal standards of behavior.
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We’ve definitely become callused. Another issue is that ethical dilemmas are out of sight and out of mind when it comes to the earliest stage of human development. We could argue that we should have a visceral reaction against early stage pharmaceutical abortions, IVF, and cloning, but the fact is that the destruction and manipulation of human life occurs at a level that we can’t see. For many of us, the ethics seem to be abstract. That makes it easier to be indifferent.
bttt
killing, maiming, rapine, theft are objectively wrong and thus harm their perpetrators whatever the intention. ... If, as we believe, artificial birth control is wrong, it is wrong even if it is used out of even a sincere intention to do the best
Indeed. The question of consciousness of sin may mitigate the damage to the sinner, but it cannot turn a crime into a non-crime. The moment another person is on the receiving end of sin, as is with murder, abortion, or cloning, the matter is for the state to intervene.
A healthy state would. Ours wouldn't; but it is still objectively a crime to commit abortion, or cloning, or euthanasia.
I would argue that the clone is completely and uniquely individual, because we don’t believe in genetic determinism. They are more unique than identical twins, because, although they share the same nuclear DNA, they have a completely different life history.
From an ethical perspective, we must also insist that a human clone would have all the rights due to any other human being, which is why we would oppose their exploitation for scientific research, medical therapy, or any other reason.
Annalex and Mad Dawg have made some of the points that I was considering. Specifically, that the ethical linchpin in the question of cloning, as in the question of IVF, is not just the severance of reproduction from natural human relations. More serious, from the standpoint of secular ethics, is the injury to the rights of the person who is conceived - a tort, as I believe annalex said.
I agree with you that the abuses of cloning, like the abuses of IVF, are inseparable from the basic concept. When something is so fundamentally contrary to nature, it’s going to tend toward worse and worse outcomes, particularly for the weakest participants.
We can oppose their exploitation all we want, but the only reason for attempting to produce clones is to exploit them for others' benefit.
In in vitro fertilization, procreation is separated from the marital act. With cloning, procreation is separated from fertilization itself. Also, someone has chosen to intentionally gives one human being an exact copy of someone else’s DNA.
It seems to me that cloning is a much more radical step toward the manipulation of human life, and that a human being is treated as an object of experimentation.
IVF processes already include pre-implantation sex-selection and other genetic selection, for example to produce a child who can be a tissue donor for another family member. The potential for additional genetic manipulation in IVF, as well as selection, is already available, perhaps already in use.
Good point. We have to take into account that proposals for increasingly radical manipulation of human life at it's earliest stages make other unethical behaviors more accessible. In other words, the temptation is more readily at hand, and the behavior that made it so was already evil to begin with.
Very well put.
Nice post.
OK, I’m going to play devil’s advocate. There is a euthenasia law in Oregon that was inserted into the state constitution after narrowly winning a ballot vote. These sort of laws are championed under slogans such as “physician assisted suicide,” or “death with dignity.” The proponents in Oregon passed it by appealing to very hard cases, perhaps ones that were mismanaged.
So here’s the hard case. Let’s say the individual is cloned for their own good, and raised by her original biological parents. Say a two year old is fatally injured by a drunk driver, and is dying in the hospital. The dad is sterile following cancer treatment, and the parents would like to raise their own child. Mom will donate the eggs, carry the baby to term, and the child will remain with her biological parents. She will have a different name than the DNA donor baby, and will never be told that he is a clone. The parents are very loving people, and they will raise the girl as they would if they had naturally conceived her following their previous babies birth. The parents are wealthy, and will pay for the cloning process themselves. Their slogan is that the child has a right to life.
Interesting scenario, IQ. Its main weakness is the premise that the child is being cloned “for its own good,” when it’s clearly for the benefit of the parents.
Now this doesn’t mean that the child is going to have an unhappy life or any known personal damage. This is the same reasoning used in many arguments about reproduction: that because the child is a good outcome, the process that produced the outcome must also be morally acceptable
Certainly the “For its own good” premise is hard for me to grasp. And WHO has the right to life? I would argue against the personal identity of the first child and the child produced by cloning.
The problem is that for someone to whom Christianity means nothing, any religious or moral arguments won’t hold any water.
While on the surface, moral arguments aside, it SEEMS like it should be safe enough, considering the track record science has with mishaps and unexpected consequences, this is a very unsettling development. The potential for abuse of this is also nothing to be overlooked.
The main abuse I see is using clones just for spare parts. They could develop a technique that would allow them to grow physically but not mentally and just warehouse them just in case.
I don't consider it unrealistic to think that a society with no morals would have no qualms about how it raised said individuals for that purpose and the second class citizenship they might be granted.
Identical twins, even siamese twins, each have their own souls.
I agree. They're not the same person. Even if (too much science fiction ... :-) they managed to transfer the "consciousness" of the first child to the body of the second, the experience-based physical characteristics of the two bodies would arguably be sufficiently distinct to produce a different personality.
(Get a hold of yourself, Mad Dawg.)
Ukie55, it's not only (or maybe not even) the non-Christians, as such, out there. It's the loss of a notion of Natural Law (or general revelation), of the dignity of Humankind, and of the value of reason, which has led to a "Who are YOU to tell me I can't marry my pet iguana?" attitude toward moral questions.
But, yeah the fact is there are a lot of people who seem to think that if we CAN make clone babies or human/aardvark chimeras (for a career in the termite control field), thy then it must be licit to do so.
LOL! I've had a similar situation with my son James, and his alternate personality, James, and his tomato snake, James ... "Would someone get the James some breakfast? They're hungry!"
The notion that, without revealed religion, there is no basis for morality is widely accepted. Pope Benedict XVI doesn't agree with this; neither does Ramesh Ponnoru, author of The Party of Death. Both contend that human reason can identify moral requirements. There's a certain circulatity to that, however, since Pope Benedict, at least, believes that a rational God created a universe that operates according to principles accessible to the reasoning creatures of the same God.
But anyway, many people believe that without authoritative religion, morality is simply opinion. As Mad Dawg points out, people have abandoned the idea of being guided, morally, by natural reason. This leaves us in a situation of, "Who can, may." Assuming we can clone human beings who will live to the point where they can be used as organ donors, slave laborers, slave armies, food (review your science fiction movies and tv shows ...), why not?
It's a simple matter of saying, "This person isn't as valuable as I am." This has been said about many people throughout history. Blacks, Jews, Australian aborigines ... the physically handicapped, the mentally handicapped ... the old, the preborn ... anyone who's not strong enough to stop ME from using them for MY purposes. The mental state, I believe, is solipsistic: Nobody except ME really exists.
As I said above, there is no reason to produce clones other than for them to be used by the producers. It will be done, if it's scientifically possible. People will persuade themselves that clones are sufficiently Not-Like-Me that it's okay to treat them in ways I would consider unjust if applied to me.
My main objection to cloning is that it treats human beings, or "potential" human beings if you prefer, as property, no better than livestock.
I don't see the difference between that and slavery for the worst sort. Think Robert Heinlein's Farnham's Freehold, where after a nuclear war, African had swarmed up from the lands and colonized America. Whites were raised as slaves and cattle and were eaten with relish. I've got a theory, by the way, that if slavery became inimically viable Tuesday, by Friday if would be livable again. Economics isn't everything that Man lives for, but it is what many men live for.
So Goliath couldn’t have been redeemed by God’s love? In my view, even Hitler or Stalin could have been redeemed. Not that I think that they were, I don’t. But God holds out that possibility until death, IMO.
That wasn’t under the Covenant of grace. And if the gene pool didn’t remain pure, there would be no grace today for anyone.
Was this a quote, or just a missed end-italics tag? And what is meant by "inimically viable"?
What about Jesus descending into hades and preaching to the dead?
Although, I agree with you generally. I just do not believe that there is a genetic component to God’s grace, and that it is accessible to anyone, regardless of descent
No, I developed the theory myself, as far as I know. Although, who knows, I may have read it somewhere and forgotten it.
That should have been, “economically”
I meant to end the italics after “cattle”. Also, I meant to say “legal”, not “livable”.
My apologies.
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