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- I think this is one question that
in many ways, I think a lot of people
will feel is sort of remote,
like what does that have to do with me?
Unless they have a pet that they want to clone
or something like that, right?
But, I think it is important because
it's a significant world view issue.
It has much to do with how we understand human beings
as made in the image of God, and
how we understand our mandate given to be stewards
of what God has created.
So, when we talk about cloning,
also referred to as somatic cell nuclear transfer,
I think this is important because
we people hear about cloning and are asked whether
they think that we should clone human beings,
the overwhelming answer is no.
But when they're asked whether we should do
somatic cell nuclear transfer for
genetic treatment of genetic diseases, they'll say yes.
Well, it's the same thing, and so
when we're talking about cloning or
somatic cell nuclear transfer,
there's two types that I'll discuss, and
both with cloning of human beings.
There's some other things that we could discuss on this, but
I think the cloning of human beings is the critical issue.
So, two types that I would discuss...
One is research cloning, sometimes called
therapeutic cloning and the other is reproductive cloning.
Okay, so with reproductive cloning, the purpose of this
would be that it's another way to
for an infertile couple to have a child.
In other words, in another form of
assisted reproductive technology, although
I would argue it's a very different type of form,
which I'll come back to, but what happens is,
you take the woman's egg and the nucleus is removed,
it's called a enucleated egg, and then you would take
a cell from, say the father,
or another donor, a somatic cell,
that's for somatic cell nuclear transfer comes from.
But a somatic cell is a body cell,
it's a non-reproductive cell that would be placed
with the enucleated egg and then
it's given either a chemical treatment or an electric charge
and it fuses them together, so
it acts as though fertilization has taken place.
If it's successful, then it starts to divide, cell division
and you have an embryo.
And so, with reproductive cloning,
that new embryo, just like with In Vitro Fertilization,
that new embryo would be placed
in the woman's womb for implantation.
So that's reproductive cloning.
Now, research cloning, or therapeutic cloning
is exactly the same procedure.
A lot of times it's talked about as though
it's completely different, it's exactly the same procedure
until you have the embryo, and then
what you do with research cloning is
you would harvest the stem cells from that embryo and
as a result, the embryo is destroyed.
The reason for doing that, much like
embryonic stem cell research, in fact it is a form
of embryonic stem cell research,
is that you use those stem cells...
Scientists would use them in research
with the hope of finding cure for various diseases, or
in my view and talking to some people
who are in research in this area,
the idea is simply to gain greater knowledge of
early human development, so
how should we evaluate these procedures?
My short answer to the question is cloning ethical?
My short answer is no, either form.
Most people are opposed to reproductive cloning,
but some will accept the advantages of
research cloning and say we should go forward with that.
In fact, in the United States, there's been
a couple of states that have passed laws
that allow for research cloning, but
prohibit reproductive cloning.
And this is interesting, because,
and tragic because by law then, what happens is
you allow the creation of a human being through cloning,
but that human being must be destroyed, imagine that.
This is a law in the United States, it's not a federal law,
but in certain states that allow research cloning,
that requires the destruction of that human being.
This ought not to happen, so
the first and most basic objection to human cloning,
to research cloning is the destruction of human embryos
that are created simply to be destroyed.
Now when it comes to reproductive cloning,
there are still problems with...
risk on human lives and destruction
because in animal trials,
one might think of the great success of Dolly the sheep,
which was two decades ago.
Well that success came only after failed attempts
well over 200, I think it was 267 failed attempts
at cloning before that successful attempt.
And when it comes to human beings then,
are we really ready to allow
for the death of so many human embryos,
the destruction of human embryos in clinical trials
before we perfect this technique?
And even if we do, the risks that are there
in animal trials, again, you've had risks of
deformed animals, of all kinds of things like that.
Are we willing to risk those things?
And we might ask ourselves,
are we even in a place where we can
be willing to risk those things?
I mean, after all, we're not risking something on ourselves,
we're risking something for someone else
who has no consent in the matter because
consent can't be obtained because
they haven't even been created yet.
And so, all of this leads me to say that
even the attempt at reproductive cloning
should be halted before it begins, and
there is some concern that because
research cloning is allowed, generally, in the United States
anywhere, anyway where it has been allowed,
it comes with a ban on reproductive cloning,
but you can imagine that if
scientists are able to perfect human cloning,
even if it's just research cloning,
that having created those embryos,
somebody will seek to use them for implantation
to bring about a human being.
We wouldn't know for years what potential implications
that human being might bare, because
of our interest in cloning, so
a second big concern when it comes to reproductive cloning
is that unnatural procreation
is the one flesh of marriage.
The husband and the wife coming together,
that issue's forth in the one flesh of the child, so the
child is partly from its mother and partly from the father.
Neither one of them completely, but
here is a unique, distinct, individual and
in various forms of assisted reproductive technologies,
this can be maintained, but it's different
with reproductive cloning.
In reproductive cloning, the child who's born
is an exact replica of the donor and
that donor could be the father, but that means that
the father's DNA is replicated exactly.
It's his DNA that is placed with the
enucleated egg of the mother, and so
the child that comes is essentially an identical twin
and so you think about this, that even though this,
this child that's born is the child of the father,
it's also, in terms of DNA, the twin of the father.
It is this kind of thing that so disrupts the
order of relationships in family and in marriage, that
we ought not to even attempt these things.
One other consideration I would give
with reproductive cloning is that
some of the prospects of reproductive cloning would be
to create a child who is the match for someone who needs
some kind of something like bone marrow transplant or
even a kidney transplant or something.
So the child would be created solely for the purpose
of serving the needs of another and
this is to treat that child instrumentally,
and to rob that person of human dignity that
all human beings deserve so even if the mother and father
deeply love this child, it would remain true that
the reason the child was brought into existence
was solely for the purpose of supplying something that
their sibling or someone else needed.
And finally, and a major concern that I have with
prospects of human reproductive cloning
is the possibility of eugenics and
that is to engineer traits in the human race
positively or eliminate defective traits
and to think that human beings have the wisdom
to engineer ourselves, let alone the whole human race,
is a hubris that really marks
a world view apart from God.
When God gives us dominion and stewardship
over what he has created, it surely
doesn't include re-engineering the human race.
Only God has sovereignty and wisdom to create us, he will.
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