Two pieces appeared in Monday’s Lantern endorsing the cloning of a human embryo. They both missed some things.
One question must be answered about the embryo; is it a member of the human family? If it is, then killing it so that others might prosper is wrong.
Sara Marie Eichenberger believes the embryo isn’t a human being, but her reasoning was faulty. She wrote that it has lesser value since it’s not developed, is smaller than a human and isn’t implanted.
But we don’t determine the value of a human by development; an infant is less developed than a four-year-old boy, but the infant isn’t less human than the four-year-old. In the same manner, an embryo is lesser developed, but it is human.
Being human is not a look-like thing, it’s a be-like thing. First, every living thing reproduces after its own kind. If you want to find out what something is, you ask “what are its parents?” With the embryo, human parents can produce nothing but human offspring.
Secondly, the embryo has a distinct human genetic blueprint, one that will stay the same all throughout development until death. The embryo is an individual being, a self-contained entity with her own nature, possesing the innate ability to progress through all the human developmental stages. All that is needed is good nurture and environment.
The embryo is a true blue member of the human family, and since it is a serious moral wrong to kill innocent human beings and since cloning a human embryo in order to harvest its stem cells kills an innocent human being, it’s wrong.
Rich BordnerseniorEnglish and philosophy
