A question posed by the Daily Plot:
British researchers have reignited a debate over interspecies cloning as they seek to eliminate the need for women to donate eggs for the cloning of human embryos. They have proposed experiments that would inject human DNA into animal eggs to "trick" them into thinking they're pregnant. After a few days, the scientists would destroy the cloned embryos and extract stem cells from them that would be used to help researchers better understand the genetic reasons for many diseases. They are pursuing this alternative because of the scarcity of human embryos they can use for research. Critics say the technique is immoral. Do you think interspecies cloning is immoral or a tool to better mankind?
No surprise that the answers are varied. Read them all because they are illuminating. The Catholic Church emphatically answers "No!" Here are three that caught my eye. First the pro:
Why are religious communities so quick to tamper with the scientific temper? From the trial of Galileo that condemned the reality that the universe is heliocentric, to the trial of John Scopes in which the prosecution upheld literal creationism, scientific understanding has been under assault by protectors of the faith. The same arguments generated today greeted the emergence of in vitro fertilization technology several decades ago.
One man's morality is another's sin. I do not believe it immoral to explore alternative ways of engendering life out of the material that God created. I do not believe that a lump of undifferentiated cells is a human being. Is cloning intrinsically evil? While there exists the potential for abuse of human dignity, this possibility does not outweigh the probable gains. Everything is neutral and subject to exploitation. The same atom that can be harnessed for social benefit can be employed to wreak inconceivable destruction; the same steel used to provide the foundation of a home can be shaped into a blade to inflict death. No doubt, ethical issues may arise at every turn of this process, but the tremendous progress in human fertility and the curing of disease that may well be made possible argues for permission to take initial steps on what will no doubt be a long journey.
RABBI MARK S. MILLER
Temple Bat Yahm
Newport Beach
"One man's morality is another's sin." I thought sin was determined by God, not man. This one makes me glad I am a Catholic simply because it was written by an Episcopalian:
Who makes such decisions? There is already strong disagreement on whether or not to permit embryonic and/or somatic cell nuclear transfer technology.
Personally, no theologian or scientist or politician, however learned; no church council or scientific organization or government agency, however authoritative; no person of faith, however holy will persuade me that something as strange-sounding as "interspecies cloning" is more immoral than continuing to allow people to suffer Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, or ALS-Lou Gehrig's disease. That cells in a laboratory could be so significant that a suffering patient would be denied the benefits of medical research goes against my admittedly limited reason and deepest feelings. I believe that our religious obligation is to discover the cures for disease, to heal the sick, to relieve suffering and to save lives.
(THE VERY REV'D CANON) PETER D. HAYNES
Saint Michael & All Angels
Episcopal Church
Corona del Mar
Limited reason and vision indeed Reverend. Are people so short-sighted that they cannot see the writing on the wall? Are they too blinded by the short term goal to see the bigger picture?
Also, I cannot underestimate how much it distrubs me that such learned and religious men can reduce a complete human organism, such as a human embryo, to nothing more than just a "clump of undifferentiated cells." If an embryo is just a clump of cells, then so am I and so are you. And that is when this line of logic takes us. Soon we all look like "clumps of cells."
Here is a well written con:
Our culture has so bought into the modern idea that humans and animals are of equal dignity and value that we have lost the distinctions. For example, we will argue that men and women are created equal in dignity, we are not exchangeable. We are different and those differences are to be honored and dignified. A man is not a woman and a woman is not a man; our dignity arises in both our humanity and our sexuality. The same is true with animals. They have dignity in their created purposes, but they are not exchangeable. A woodlouse (a.k.a. "roly-poly") does not have equal value to my dog. I will not spend $300 to make sure a woodlouse survives getting run over by a car. Nor will I spend $300,000 to rescue my dog compared to what I would spend to rescue my child. There are differences in value of each creation. Each has dignity in its design. To mess with intermingling species is like taking a Da Vinci sculpture and mixing it with a Picasso sculpture. It not only violates the beauty of the art, but also insults the intent of the artists.
Though curing disease is a noble cause, it can never take precedence over who the cause is attempting to cure. The end-game is not to merely cure diseases, but to improve human life. We cannot improve our lives if in the prevention of disease we have destroyed human dignity.
RIC OLSEN
Lead Pastor
The Beacon
Let me highlight that last line:
The end-game is not to merely cure diseases, but to improve human life. We cannot improve our lives if in the prevention of disease we have destroyed human dignity.
