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The Key: When Life Begins

Six years ago I reacted to an essay on the ethics of cloning by asking why anyone would waste time pondering the moral implications of something that could never happen. So much for my gifts of prophecy. As anyone who's read a newspaper in the last week knows, Ian Wilmut, an embryologist in Scotland, has successfully cloned an adult sheep. Although Wilmut said it would be "offensive" to clone a human being, he indicated that the technology for replicating human life is within reach. If so, we have some serious thinking to do. We cannot afford to make scientific progress now and add critical and moral insight later. Some of the voices in this discussion will no doubt come from the Christian church because so many of the concerns about cloning touch on theological issues. For if there were ever a Tower of Babel—which originally was an attempt to elevate ourselves through human accomplishment to the level of God—surely this is it.

On the one hand, the attempt to create human life seems the worst form of pride, and all the more sinful when one attempts to create a more perfect humanity or a human made in one's own image. And the attempt to create more nearly perfect human beings raises the specter of having a power over human beings that the church ascribes only to God.

On the other hand, while issuing this warning against attempting to play God, theologians should remind people that even the awesome ability to replicate humans would not actually turn us into gods. The belief that advances in scientific technology decrease the power of God as they proportionately increase human power itself represents hubris and self-deception. No matter how successful we are at putting together the right biological material to replicate life, we do not, as God does, call life into being. If we proceed with research into cloning we must do so with humility, and the recognition that human cloning would not mean we have become our own creators.

But the procedure does provide yet another potential means for humans to act as our own destroyers. Although cloning does not involve fertilizing an egg, but rather transplanting the DNA from the cell(s) of one animal to another, once the newly fused DNA and egg have been implanted into a uterus, this material develops into a new life. So, the same question that plagues debates over abortion and artificial means of reproduction would apply to human cloning: When does human life begin?

Traditionally, Roman Catholics have held that "ensoulment" occurs at conception, so that anytime a fertilized egg is lost, a human life is lost as well. While cloning sidesteps conception, one could ask whether "ensoulment" occurs at the moment the DNA is successfully transferred from one cell to the next. Even those who do not employ the language of "ensoulment" can acknowledge concern for whether a failed attempt at human cloning would indicate the failure to combine genetic material—or the loss of an individual human life. That question must be debated, and if we proceed with research in cloning we must proceed with a profound respect for life.

Another question human cloning raises is whether the process breaks biblical and natural laws that reveal God's will for procreation between man and woman. One scientist even suggested (humorously) that human cloning could eliminate the need for men. But it is doubtful that conceiving children in the old-fashioned way will ever become unpopular. Neither men nor women, fathers nor mothers, will become obsolete.

One cannot, however, dismiss concern for the child brought into being through cloning. What kind of identity crisis would arise if one were a duplicate of one's father or mother or diseased sister (and knew that one was brought into being to be a duplicate)? We must weigh a couple's desire for a genetically preplanned child against the best interest of children. Until we have more information on the effect of existing artificial means of reproduction (such as artificial insemination with an anonymous donor) on the children and families they produce, surely we must prohibit the cloning of human beings. If we proceed with research in cloning, we must do so with extreme caution.

Besides the questions involving human cloning, the church must ask if the ownership and manipulation of animal life and species is consistent with the command to have dominion over the earth. Those faithful to their Judeo-Christian heritage should not only be concerned about the well-being of humanity, but about the welfare of all of God's creatures. What does it mean to hold a patent on a species of animals? Has dominion over the earth's creatures moved too far into the arena of objectification through ownership and control?

But there is a danger as well in rigid opposition to cloning. If the church supports a total ban on all cloning, does it not risk admitting that reason must be fettered by ignorance in order to protect our faith?

(One is reminded that Galileo was sentenced first to life in prison, and then to house arrest, for "vehement suspicion of heresy," because he supported the Copernican view that the earth moves around the sun, a view deemed by the Inquisition to contradict biblical claims for a stationary earth.) Surely the faithful can thank God for the incredible resources of the human mind and for the accomplishments of human science and pray for their progress.

But while we should thank God for human resourcefulness, we also must acknowledge the human capacity to misuse those resources and scientific accomplishments for evil purposes. Rather than burying our heads in the sand by calling for a moratorium on all such research (for fear that animal cloning will inevitably lead to human cloning), or leaving the scientific world to regulate itself, the Church (along with other religious bodies, governmental agencies, lawyers, etc.) must help forge a responsible path for this new technology before it proceeds further. We should, I believe, encourage science to proceed cautiously, openly and with a willingness to be regulated by institutions that seek not only to promote science or monetary gain, but to protect the public good.