A PAPER ON THE PERSPECTIVES ON HUMAN CLONING

Ateneo de Davao University – College of Law

LLB 114 – Christian Ethics II
Mr. Alfredo L. Alpas

Carlo L. Bahalla
Josue M. Carmen Jr.
Daniel Dei D. Mañacap
 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness, to rule over
the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, and over all the
earth itself and every creature that crawls upon it.” So God created man in His
own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created
them. (Genesis 1:27; NIV)

The Bible says that God created man in his own image. He took dust from the
earth, molded it, then He breathed into it the breath of life. In the text mentioned above in
Genesis 1:27, God made man in order to rule over the other creations that existed. After
the creation of man, the woman was created to become a partner for man. Man, together
with the woman, gained dominion over all that existed on this place where God put him
in.

Man utilized the creation around him to serve his own purpose. For example, man
cut trees for wood and timber to make fire and houses. Man also hunted game that he
may take the pelt and create clothing in order to survive the cold environment. Man has
created a lot using God’s own creation for his own benefit and for attempting to satisfy his
insatiable hunger and curiosity for more. From the creation of metal to the beginning of
the Industrial Revolution until the present, man has always been discovering new things
to do to improve his way of life. Throughout the centuries of the rise and fall of civilization,
one of many things that remains in existence is man’s innovation. Man, through his
innovation, satisfies necessities by creating many different things.

In a sense, this innovation and ability to create is just like an imitation of what God
did in the first place, which is to create. Man is one of God’s great creations. Endowed
with wisdom and knowledge that is continuously evolving and learning, is there a limit to
the potential of man? We have already seen what man is capable of. Such is out of the
question.

The main question now is how far can man’s innovation reach in light of being able
to create? Man has once attempted to reach God’s level when they attempted to create
a tower that would reach the heavens. Will man once more try play at “being God” and
imitate His power of creation? At this juncture, the concept of human cloning shall enter.
Can man, through technological advancements, artificially create another man or a copy
of himself? What dangers or advantages lie ahead if man will tread down this path? Is it
wrong or is it permissible to attempt yet again to imitate God in creating man?
 BACKGROUND OF HUMAN CLONING

Cloning is the creation of a genetically identical copy of a creature. The process of

cloning is done by inserting the nucleus of the cell of an adult creature into an enucleated
ovum resulting to the development of an embryo. The embryo will develop the genetic
code of the mammal from which the inserted nucleus was gathered.

It was in 1938 that the first idea of cloning was conceived. Scientists proposed a
“fantastic experiment” to replace the nucleus of an egg cell with the nucleus of another
cell and to grow an embryo from such an egg. In 1952, scientists Robert Briggs and
Thomas King attempted to clone a frog by collecting the nucleus from a frog egg cell with
a pipette and replace it with the nucleus taken from a cell of a frog embryo. Unfortunately,
the said experiment was not successful. In 1970, scientist John B. Gurdon successfully
cloned a frog but its development only reached the stage of tadpole. Despite attempts,
he never managed to obtain an adult specimen. For many years, his achievements were
questioned especially in light of unsuccessful attempts to clone mammals. However, after
decades of unsuccessful attempts, in 1997, the journal magazine “Nature” announced the
first ever successful cloning of a sheep named “Dolly”. Scientists were surprised because
they had earlier believed that it is nearly impossible to achieve cloning of an adult mammal
by nucleus transfer. Yet, in light of this breakthrough, many were concerned, troubled,
and even horrified of the idea that if adult mammals like sheep could be cloned, then, by
analogy, cloning adult humans would also be possible.

In popular media, the feat was an instant hit to the masses. The idea of cloning
sparked many ideas and perspectives especially those leaning towards the fear of the
negative implications and possibilities cloning could bring. To portray their thoughts on
this sparking ideology of nightmare scenarios, media practitioners put their ideas in
depictions of laboratory mistakes resulting to monsters, the cloning of armies of Hitler, or
even the totalitarian ends as explained in the famous book of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New
World.

The scientific community and political leaders responded to the prospect of human
cloning with a strong condemnation. In the United States, President Bill Clinton
immediately banned federal financing of the human cloning research and asked privately
funded scientists to halt such work until a committee namely the National Bioethics
Advisory Commission (NBAC) could review such work as it has very troubling and ethical
implications. The World Health Organization (WHO) described it as “ethically
unacceptable as it would violate the basic principle which govern human reproduction”.
Around the world, similar reactions were heard as human cloning was called “a violation
of human rights and human dignity”. (Council of Europe, 1986)

Nevertheless, cautious voices were heard suggesting some possible benefits from
the use of human cloning in limited circumstances and controlled environments, and
question its hasty prohibition (Robertson, 1994)
 PROS – POSSIBLE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL BENEFITS OF HUMAN CLONING

INDIVIDUAL BENEFITS

Human cloning can be an alternative way for people who are infertile.

Human cloning would allow women who have no ova or men who have no sperm
to produce an offspring that is biologically related to them (Eisenberg, 1976). While there
is a moral dilemma of choosing the mode of reproduction, human cloning ensures that an
individual who cannot overcome their infertility by any other means acceptable would then
be able to do so. It allows these people to procreate while maintaining the biological
vinculum from the parent to the child.

Most couples yearn to have an experience of pregnancy and raise a child that is
biologically related to them. For someone that values biological connection and intimacy,
there seems to be no good argument to refute the concept of human cloning as a mode
of reproduction.

1. Human cloning would enable couples in which one party risks transmitting a
serious hereditary disease, a serious risk of disease, or an otherwise harmful
condition to an offspring, to reproduce without doing so (Robertson, 1994).

Human cloning would be a means of preventing hereditary and genetically

transmitted harms to human offspring. The fact that some parents just might resort to
human cloning in order for their offspring to avoid inheriting the genetic transmission of
what would be a harmful condition to their child is irrefutable.

2. Human cloning a twin would enable a person to obtain needed organs or tissues
for transplantation, should the need ever arise (Robertson, 1994).

The difficulty of finding a suitable and a compatible donor whose organ or tissue
match the other can be solved by human cloning. It would eliminate or dramatically reduce
the transplant rejection by the host, as the organs to replacing the damaged ones come
from that from a supposed twin which has identical tissues of the transplanted organ of
the host.

The availability of human cloning for this purpose would amount to a form of
insurance policy to enable treatment of certain kinds of medical needs. In other cases,
the need for an organ, such as a heart or a liver that the later twin would need to maintain
life would preclude cloning and then taking the organ from an even later twin.

However, this raises some serious ethical questions, on the argument that the later
twin is not, as a person, valued and loved as the host, but simply as a means of benefiting
another.

3. Human cloning would enable individuals to clone someone who had special
meaning to them, such as a child who had died (Robertson, 1994).
 If human cloning enabled some individuals to clone a person who had special
meaning to them and doing so would give them deep satisfaction, which would be a
benefit to them even if their reasons for wanting to do so were based on confusion.

SOCIAL BENEFITS

1. Human cloning would enable the duplication of individuals of great talent, genius,
character, or other exemplary qualities.

This finds application in genetic amplification of DNA and alteration of genetic

makeup, and to make extremely exceptional babies. This is done by choosing only which
abilities would ensure that a clone would develop into a more advanced version of man.

The fifth reason looks towards the benefit the populous and the broader society by
being able to reproduce and replicate genes of extra ordinary persons. Individuals like
Mozart, Einstein, Gandhi, or Schweitzer may be replicated and written into a clone’s
genetic makeup (Kass, 1988)

None of this is to deny that Mozart’s and Einstein’s extraordinary musical and
intellectual capabilities, nor even Gandhi’s and Schweitzer’s extraordinary moral
greatness, were produced in part by their unique genetic inheritances. This goes on a
presumption that these extraordinary feats are factors attributed to their genes and partly
from the environment they belonged to.

However, this benefit also gives rise to huge ethical dilemmas as it is associated
with selective eugenics and the question of who will regulate such practices of choosing
what are the ideal traits that are needed to be reproduced, where the standards would
come from, and what extent will it be used.
 CONS - Argument against Human Cloning

“Do not play God” is an expression towards someone who is supposedly taking on
the role of God for purposes like to the creation or ending of life. As we have learned in
our history, interfering with the natural order of things leads to indubitable consequences
and human cloning is no exception of it.

Human cloning started off as a major achievement in the field of Biology and has
become one of the most controversial issues in the world. It opens up new doors for the
advancement of the humankind. However, as much as the advantages and vast
possibilities that it offer, human cloning raises profound moral and ethical questions to the
society itself.

First of all, the cloning procedure would be dehumanizing. Current scientific

information indicates that the present cloning technique is far from being perfect. In fact,
during the process of cloning Dolly the sheep, Wilmut’s group had 276 failures before
their success indicating that the procedure is not perfect, even with sheep. Given the high
rates of morbidity and mortality in the cloning of other mammals, it is believed that cloning-
to-produce-children would be extremely unsafe, and that attempts to produce a cloned
child would be highly unethical. Even assuming that cloning’s safety and effectiveness is
established with animals, research would need to be done to establish its safety and
effectiveness for humans. Several trials would have to be conducted and in the process,
several errors would be committed.

Secondly, human cloning would lessen the worth of individuals and diminish
respect for human life for it would lead to persons being viewed as replaceable.
Individuals’ identities are not only determined by their genes but also by their interaction
over time with their environments, including the choices made and the important relations
they form with other persons. This means, in turn, that no individual could be fully replaced
by a later clone possessing the same genes. However, this idea is being threatened by
cloning. Cloning would lead the people to view humans as replaceable objects by not
grieving on the loss of a loved one due to the idea that they can easily replace him or her
with a clone who possesses the same genes. Also, people would now see humans as
able to be manufactured or “handmade.” This demystification of the creation of human
life would reduce our appreciation and awe of it and of its natural creation.

Thirdly, human cloning might be used by governments or other groups for immoral
and exploitative purposes. A possibility cannot be ignored that if human cloning is
permitted, people, corporations, and even governments would fund engineering of
individuals with limited abilities and conditioned to do, and to be happy doing, the menial
work that society needed done would be made. Selection and control in the creation of
people would be exercised not in the interests of the persons created, but in the interests
of the society and at the expense of the persons created. Any use of human cloning for
such purposes would exploit the clones solely as means for the benefit of others, and
would violate the equal moral respect and dignity they are owed as full moral persons.
Nightmare scenarios like these may be unlikely, but their impact should not be
underestimated on public concern with technologies like human cloning.

Human cloning challenges our fundamental religious faith and belief. From a
religious view, humans have been made in the image of God. Reproductive cloning would
interfere with this. Also, humans were made stewards of the earth, and not the rulers of
it. Our duty is to protect the earth and the life on it. It is not our right to change and modify
it.

Indeed, the human civilization is not prepared to handle such matters with ease.
Human cloning is not a need in order for the human race to survive. No life is worth
more than another man or thing. It being a luxurious alternative to aid medicinal and
technological science, it is greatly expendable. Human cloning brings forth more
negative features and requirements than it does positive ones. The path to perfecting
the process is exorbitantly demanding. Thus, human cloning is a very negative and
atrocious concept in and of itself.
 CONCLUSION
Genesis 1:1 reads: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”
Included in the story of creation is the creation of Adam. As such, an intelligent Creator
whose intellect is unfathomable to the human understanding created man. The design
that man was created from is so intricate that man himself cannot repeat it. For man to
attempt to imitate the Divine’s acts, denotes that the results are bound to be flawed. God
set forth a design that he himself made and that pattern was meant to be followed by
everyone.

It would be against the will of God to deviate from his design and create men
artificially with the use of science and technology and not through sexual congress.
Despite the advantages of engineering the future offspring into some form of Übermensch
(Beyond-Men), the design of God is superior and man must not deviate from it. If he does,
then he will be treading down the path towards his own demise. Cloning is simply contrary
to nature as it clearly deviates from God’s design. This would be unbecoming of man.

Another serious ethical dilemma that exists is the matters regarding the creation
of the clone. In order to perfect the process, scientists would have to experiment on real
human flesh and organs. Whether or not the organs and flesh used for the experiments
come from dead or live human beings is nothing short of monstrous and degrading on the
side of human beings. Yet another dilemma is on the part of the clone, assuming that
cloning actually does take place. The inquiry here is whether or not the clone has a soul
and should the clone be treated equally as that of a human bred through natural sexual
congress.

In light of all of this, this group declares that it does not approve of cloning for many
moral and ethical atrocities that it entails. Its moral and ethical concerns pose a higher
concern over its advantages. We do not presume that God wants man to act like they are
Him and even more so do we not approve Man experimenting on his own kin. Mankind
has been through enough atrocities that sacrifice the being and dignity of our brethren in
the name of medicinal and technological advancements. Therefore, this group concludes
that the cons of human cloning greatly outweigh the pros. In the context of God’s design,
this group follows the teachings of the Bible in terms of adherence, honor, and respect
for God and His will.
References:

Brock, D. W., PhD. (n.d.). Cloning Human Beings: An Assessment of the Ethical Issues
Pro and Con. Retrieved February 22, 2019, from
https://bioethicsarchive.georgetown.edu/nbac/pubs/cloning2/cc5.pdf

Eisenberg, L. (1976). The outcome as cause: Predestination and human cloning.

Retrieved from: https://bioethicsarchive.georgetown. edu/nbac/ pubs/cloning2/
cc5.pdf

Kass, L., & Wilson, J. Q. (1998). The ethics of human cloning. Washington, D.C.: AEI
Press.

McKinnell, R. (1979). Cloning: A Biologist Reports. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota

Press

“Then God said, ‘Let Us make man” (Genesis 1:27, New International Version)