Some Further Thoughts

Yesterday I spent quite a bit of time explaining some truth about all the media attention to the Embryonic Stem Cell Research announcement this past week. Today I want to talk about another aspect of President Obama's action.

As part of the announcement that the Federal Government will now fund Embryonic Stem Cell Research, without any regard to Ethical concerns, it was stated that President Obama is against cloning. In order to see why this is a lie, we'll have to talk a little bit about what cloning is.

There are two kinds of cloning, scientifically speaking. There is reproductive cloning, and therapeutic cloning.

First, reproductive cloning. This would involve the creation of an embryo by selectively fertilizing an egg and then placing it inside a woman (unless some way is found in the lab to grow it without a woman being involved) and allowing it to be born as a human infant. While there are some practical concerns about the viability of a person created in this manner (that is to say it's ability to survive and not mutate) but assuming those things could be overcome, one would be hard pressed to argue against this on ethical grounds. I know that's something of a shocking statement, most people believe that reproductive cloning would be terrible, and that somehow we would be playing God by doing such a thing. I can't agree with that assessment though. God created the material universe, and everything in it, including people, out of nothing. Then He gave us a command. In Genesis 1:28a God tells us, "And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth..." and while God designed a wonderful and marvelous, you might say miraculous, way for us to do this naturally, there is no prohibition against doing so by other means. To genetically engineer the clone certainly would change the discussion, but just reproductive cloning on it's own is not unethical on it's face. Oddly enough, this is the type of cloning that President Obama is opposed to.

Now, assuming just straight up cloning were perfected, what would make it unethical? Clearly treating the clone as though they had no value as a human being, and/or using them as you saw fit, against their will, would be wrong. Take for instance the idea of cloning a person, growing them into an adult and then killing them so that their organs could be used for transplant for non clones. This would be an unethical and monstrous thing to do. However, in an exaggerated way, I just described therapeutic cloning. That is where you clone an embryo and then destroy it by extracting the Stem Cells, for research, or assuming that someday they actually did find a practical use for them, which seems unlikely today, then for some therapy. That is to say, cloning a human being for the purpose of killing them for the benefit of non clones. Therapeutic cloning is at the heart of Embryonic Stem Cell Research. The research cannot be done without it.

In summary, there are two kinds of cloning, one is ethical, and one is not. President Obama is opposed to the ethical type, but supports the unethical version.

Of course, this is magnified when you consider the fact that there are literally hundreds of uses for Adult Stem Cells already in use, and Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells show even more promise, while there is not a single use of Embryonic Stem Cells yet, nor do they show any promise whatsoever. In fact, Embryonic Stem Cells cause tumors, so, rather than promising to make things better, they make things worse. So why would you support destroying Human beings, or even potential human beings, when there is both no benefit, and the benefits you are hoping for are available from another means which carries none of the moral or ethical qualms?

Doesn't seem to make much sense does it?