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Biblical
issues with cloning
The biggest issue at hand is when does the cell
or group of cells become a human being?
The position taken by most who are against cloning is that
life begins at conception, hence the issue becomes the same as that
of abortion. In
therapeutic cloning, a 14 day old baby would be killed.
Posing a problem for those who take the view that life begins
at conception is the fact that there is no actual conception of an
egg.
It could be argued that because there is no
fertilization of an egg, a baby is not created but rather a cell.
If this is the case, killing this “pre-embryo” would be
no different from me having a mole removed – it would be a lump of
cells. A quote from
newscientist.com says, “To say that a cloned ball of cells no
bigger than a pinprick cannot be created to allow a grown person to
live is cruelly dogmatic.” (The
article later says that to uselessly kill a bunch of these is
reproachable as well, so if nothing else, the editorial was
advocating some limitations.) If
a ball of cells is all this amounts to at 14 days it would be
foolish to prohibit its use to create a better life for suffering
people. While the cell
contains the genetic material to become a life, it is not created
naturally and therefore not a life at that point.
(It at some point does later because in adult cloning, it
becomes a baby – unless someone wishes to argue that the baby is
not alive because it was not conceived.)
This is the argument of those for cloning.
However, it can be argued that one single cell,
no matter how it was created, will grow into a baby if given nine
months. This could be a
very good indication that it is human life, even at the point of
being a single cell. In
which case, life would not only begin at conception but at the point
when a cell that has the potential to become a baby exists.
Some more food for thought: There is a high
rate of death for zygotes (time from when a fertilized egg exists
till it attaches to the uterine wall around week two).
Around 60% of zygotes die in the fallopian tubes, while more
die before attaching to the uterine wall.
This high mortality rate occurs before the 14 days at which
the stem cells are harvested.
What does the Bible say about any of this?
The typical belief, as I stated, is that life begins at
conception. We can’t
however prove or disprove the notion.
The Bible says that God knit us together in our mother’s
womb. God also knew us
before we were born. God
is obviously involved in the process of creating life.
That is why this is such an issue.
If God didn’t care about a fetus before birth, it
wouldn’t be much of an issue.
But since abortion kills a child that God has been knitting
together and God has known, it’s a much different.
It still does nothing to say at what point a life is formed.
It occurs at some point in the womb obviously and before
birth.
This is where I go out on a limb from my
conservative brothers and sisters.
Please don’t cast your stones until you hear me out at
least. I am unsure if a
zygote becomes a “life” until it reaches the womb (the first two
weeks are spent traveling down the fallopian tubes.)
At the start of two weeks however, organs start being
developed and brain activity is discernible at six.
The problem becomes that if a human life is created, along
with a soul, then heaven is full of people who never lived two weeks
past conception. (This
is of course assuming that children under a certain age go to
heaven.) I could be very
wrong, but when I reach heaven, I don’t expect to see a bunch of
people who never lived two weeks past conception.
At two weeks when organs are formed and an embryo takes on
human characteristics, I believe that to end its life is to take the
life of another human. Note:
Abortions occur after two weeks and therefore I am still against
them.
Does this mean I would approve of cloning?
No, because this isn’t the end of the issue.
There are more moral complications even if life is not
created until after the time when stem cells are harvested.
First off, I am not certain and will never have any way
of knowing if I am right. I
would in no way bet my life or anyone else’s that I’m right on
this issue. The Bible
does not say and there is no way of knowing.
Therefore, I can’t advocate killing “pre-embryos” even
for the chance of extending another person’s life. I
stand for the middle of the road on the issue, saying it is better
to be safe then to kill thousands of lives.
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More
moral issues with cloning
The issue doesn’t
end here. If we can
ignore the issue of whether a life is being taken, it only gets more
complicated. Cloning is
in the very early stages of development.
In attempts to clone animals, scientists have had a very
small amount of success. Certainly
they have succeeded in doing it, but as simple as the process sounds
(if you call the process I explained earlier simple) it simply
doesn’t work most of the time.
To clone
“Dolly” the sheep, it took 276 tries.
Even now, scientists are unsure of their success.
The sheep has developed arthritis and some fear that it may
be due to premature aging. We
can’t be sure because so far, this is our best subject to observe.
If scientists clone a human and their body acts like it is
middle aged when the child is only a teenager and dies of “old
age” at 30, it would be an atrocity.
Moreover, in the
successful attempts at cloning, many animals have come out deformed
or having serious birth defects.
Scientists have no idea why because their parents have no
such problems. It is
feared that to clone a human the same birth defects may be just as
common.
DNA, as much as we
have discovered about it, is still a big mystery.
Researchers are discovering new things about it all the time.
To be experimenting with it when we have no idea what the
consequences are would be incredibly foolish.
When the atom bomb was being tested in its early days, many
people were subjected to radiation because the scientists did not
understand all the principles. It
would be horrible to create babies with unknown problems that
they’d have to live with for the rest of their lives.
Therapeutic cloning
holds many of the same problems.
Scientists know what they want to do and they think they know
how to do it. However,
they can’t get it to work. Problems
keep occurring that they don’t have explanations for at the time.
Once they are successful, what do they do then?
When a new drug comes out, it is tested for years on animals
before it is used in humans. But
once we have a human liver, do we just throw it in the person it was
grown for? Once again,
we have no idea what the ramifications are.
Even if we ignore
the arguments of pro-life groups, cloning is not without its
critics. While many in
the scientific community herald the potential discoveries as earth
shattering, just as many are asking for sensibility on the issue.
While everyone is for finding a cure for paralysis or cancer,
the risks involved in cloning may be too great.
Cloning is illegal
in many countries. Some
have banned human cloning, allowing therapeutic cloning, while
others have banned therapeutic cloning.
However, cloning will never be illegal everywhere and those
who wish to practice it badly enough will simply go to another
country where it is legal.
Some websites I
visited seemed to blame pro-life groups for having cloning banned in
many countries, saying that in countries where the pro-life movement
isn’t as strong, it hasn’t been banned.
Certainly, the pro-life movement is against cloning and has
stood against it, but they cannot be the sole cause for its banning.
If pro-life groups held enough political sway to ban cloning
on their own, they would also be able to ban abortion.
Obviously, there is enough of the scientific community who
feel that cloning is too dangerous and wish to have it curbed.
I don’t know
where this debate will go. As
I write this, there have been claims that a cloned human baby have
been born. This report
comes from a radical group and many are skeptical of the claim.
However, there is at least one credible doctor who is said to
be near a breakthrough. It
may be only a matter of time before a cloned baby is born.
This does not remove any ethical questions concerning the
process of cloning however.
If therapeutic
cloning becomes successful and discovers the treatment for many
diseases, there will still be those who ask, “At what cost has
this come, thousands of unborn?”
While the methods are yet to be successful, those against it
hold the high ground. If
the practice is ever successful, the debate will explode to
unbelievable proportions. It
will become more volatile than the issue of abortion and more
heated.
For now, however,
it is in its “pre-embryo” stage and has not grown into what it
may fully be. Only time
will tell if it is snuffed out or grown into a powerful and
respected field of science.
Sites researched:
www.newscientist.com
www.religioustolerance.org
www.wutsamada.com
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