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^Bioethics

Cloning

Stem Cell Research - Fetal Tissue Experimentation - Links

Cloning, also called somatic cell nuclear transfer, is a process of bypassing sexual reproduction and using science to produce a genetic twin of an organism. In this process, the nucleus of a somatic cell (any ‘body’ cell other than an egg or sperm) is placed in an unfertilized egg cell where the nucleus has been removed. A small electric jolt is then used to stimulate the development of this being.

If the embryo survives for 5-6 days in culture, its fate depends on the goals of the research. If the researcher wants the embryo to be born, then the embryo is placed in a surrogate womb and continues to develop. If the researcher wants to experiment on the embryo, the embryo is disposed of and is ended when it is no longer useful.

Even though cloning was once considered science fiction, it became a reality on February 27, 1997. On this date, English scientists announced that they had used the process described above to create a cloned sheep named Dolly. In this experiment it took 277 attempts at cell manipulation and 29 embryo implants before Dolly was born. This means that 276 sheep embryos, fetuses, and newborns died to create a single sheep. Would it be right to sacrifice 276 humans lives for each cloned human?

Since the production of Dolly, scientists have been able to clone various kinds of animals including monkeys, pigs, mice, and cows.

In an interview with Nigel Cameron for Christianity Today magazine, Dr. Leon Kass,Chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics, was noted as saying, 

"Cloning represents a very clear, powerful, and immediate example in which we are in danger of turning procreating into manufacture, sometimes referred to as `designer babies,’ in which parents and scientists impose their private eugenic visions on the child-to-be,” Kass said. "A child, therefore, ceases to be welcomed as a gift, as a mysterious stranger whose genetic independence from the parents is a kind of emblem of the kind of independence that all of our children are raised to acquire, and instead becomes a being to work out the particular will that the parents have."

". . . as bad as it might be to destroy a creature made in God’s image, it might be very much worse to be creating them after an image of one’s own."

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Revised: April 23, 2007.