Six weeks ago, three doctors from the U.S, Italy, and Israel announced plans to clone a human being. Over spring break, they held a scientific forum in Rome where they discussed their plans.
One of the doctors, Dr. Avi Ben-Abraham, stated, “Some claim that we’re moving too fast. They are right. We are moving as fast as we can think, as fast as we can imagine, but we are proceeding with the utmost responsibility.”
Wait a second. I don’t get it. This is human life we are talking about. How can moving too fast be “proceeding with the utmost responsibility?” We shouldn’t just barge ahead without gaining the proper ethical bearings first.
This issue of human cloning is very controversial. Emotions run high on both sides, and it’s a relatively new question, so I admit I’m no expert on this. However, I feel some things have been said that do merit consideration.
The doctors in Rome want to provide children for infertile couples with cloning. Yet as Dr. Ray Bohlin points out, that’s not a good reason when we realize there are so many children desperately in need of adoption.
The pain of the infertile couples might be deep, but as Bohlin states, “this is a case where our desire to live in a painless world is clouding our ability to make moral decisions.”
Compassion is necessary, but when it becomes absolute, it blinds us to several pertinent considerations, like whether or not cloning violates human dignity and worth.
Compassion alone, devoid of a rich, deep awareness of our purpose and nature, drowns morality. Without a moral compass, things may be justified in its name that neither reason nor conscience can uphold. Pretty soon, even the language of compassion itself loses meaning.
Also, what about sympathy for the cloned child? That is a question the doctors missed. Among many other things that would not be good for the cloned child, there is great risk of deformity and early death in cloning.
What about parents of a fatally injured child being allowed to have their child cloned?
Even if such an enterprise was successful, it wouldn’t give back the lost child. The child might look the same, but she would have a completely different personality, emotions, will, and soul. Unrealistic expectations might be placed on a clone that would not be put on a normally produced child, and this might cause more frustration than comfort.
Some point out that much can be learned about human embryonic development by researching human cloning. This is true, but at what cost? Is it worth it to reduce human life to a commodity?
More generally, as Gilbert Mileander notes, a human clone would be something that is made by us rather than one that comes from us; he would be a product rather than a gift, and when we make a product, we determine its purpose, destiny, and meaning. Those things are not up to us to determine in matters of human life. That job is reserved for someone else.
Although children are our offspring, its not for us to decide their meaning and destinies. Children aren’t products meant to satisfy our desires and further our knowledge and health. They aren’t supposed to be made by us; they come from us.
Human beings have dignity, and this dignity just can’t be blithely traversed in the name of progress. And human beings don’t have worth just because other human beings say so. That dignity doesn’t come from human decree and will, so it’s a dignity that can’t be taken away by simple decree either.
There is also a very real possibility of a slippery slope too. Although slippery slope arguments are sometimes a bit “Chicken Little,” here I think caution is warranted. Once human cloning is done, the door will be opened to all sorts of options that are much more troublesome. Ones that respect human life even less than the options I’ve outlined today. Once that door is opened, it will be awfully hard to close it.
So “can it be done?” is one thing, but “should it be done?” is another. Just because it can be done doesn’t mean it should be done. I don’t know, that seems like common sense to me.
Rich Bordner can be reached at [email protected]
