Human Cloning Moral and Philosophical Considerations When I look at thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the

moon and the stars which thou has established What is man that thou art mind ful of him and the son of man that thou dost care for him? Yet thou has made him little les s than God, and dost crown him with glory and honor. Thou has given him dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet ... O Lord, our Lord How majestic is thy name in all the earth! (Ps. 8). Because God crowns every single person with glory and honor, it is His will that every child should be born into a family consisting of a father and a mother jo ined in matrimony. The child should feel that he belongs there, that parents lov e him and care for him. Brothers and sisters, grandfathers and grandmothers, unc les and aunts fill out the love nest inside of which God wishes to awaken each n ew child whom He places into this world. By receiving so much love from a father and mother, day after day, in sickness and in health, in good weather and bad, for better and for worse, a child should learn to give love in turn. That's why cloning is so wrong, so unjust, so unnatural! When God joined Adam and Eve in monogamous matrimony, He transplanted some of th e bliss of the Blessed Trinity into a trinity of father, mother, and child on ea rth. When God brought Eve to Adam, there was bliss in that first marriage. The m an was ecstatic and he said: "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my f lesh; and she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife and they become one flesh" Gen 2:23-24). Christ confirmed that the marriage of Adam and Eve was monogamous and for life, in Matthew Chapter 19. It is God's plan that children l earn to love both God and man when they see how father and mother love each othe r. We do not oppose cloning out of fear that clones might overpopulate the earth; n or is our primary concern that Republican cloners might clone voters faster than Democrats. Our deepest concern is not even that a Rockefeller or other eugenics -minded groups might attempt to produce a super-race, and eliminate us lesser be ings. Our reasons go even deeper than that. The Church loves people, of course, lots of them. The Catechism salutes large fa milies with the words: "Sacred Scripture and the Church's traditional practice s ee in large families a sign of God's blessing and of parental generosity" (No. 2 373). The new Latin version of this sentence reads in the Catechism even more el egantly: Sacra Scriptura et traditionalis praxis Ecclesiae in familiis numerosis signum vident benedictionis divinae et generositatis parentum. My father and mo ther, who bore and raised us ten rambunctious children, would love this sentence . They tamed us with their practice of the faith; and with the help of the stick always within easy reach behind the mirror. The Catechism italicizes the two wo rds large families. That's putting a halo on parents of many children. But while the Church blesses large families, she does not sprinkle holy water on human incubators. The Catechism (No. 2376) states that it is only married spous es who have the "right to become a father and a mother [and] only through each o ther." Even married couples don't have a right to procreate children artificiall y. For it is possible only through a free and loving act of intercourse that spo uses can become genuine fathers and mothers of children; whereas by artificial p rocreation methods they act more like poultry producers who own their chickens.

For the child there is a vast difference between knowing a father and a mother, and being produced in a hatchery. The Catechism states that the act which brings a child into existence must be one by which two persons give themselves to one another. (It must not be an act whic h) entrusts the life and identity of the embryo into the power of doctors and bi ologists and establishes the domination of technology over the origin and destin y of the human person. Such a relationship of dominion is in itself contrary to the dignity and equality that must be common to parents and children... (No. 237 7). In other words, the child has a right to be procreated in the manner which God h as in mind for it. In this aspect, parents and their child are equals before God . He made the parents, He makes the child. Both parties obey Him, both parties r espect each other out of reverence for God their maker. The Catechism goes on to explain that parents don't have a right to have childre n, but children have a right to have parents. 2378 A child is not something owed to one, but is a gift. The "supreme gift of m arriage" is a human person. A child may not be considered a piece of property, a n idea to which an alleged "right to a child" would lead. In this area, only the child possesses genuine rights: the right "to be the fruit of the specific act of the conjugal love of his parents, and "the right to be respected as a person from the moment of his conception." Parents have a right to receive children from God, and these children come packa ged with rights already received from God. Without God, No Human Comes into Existence Cloners are absolutely wrong if they think they can put together a human being b y technological manufacture. They can't produce a human soul. No doctor, no tech nician, no geneticist can produce a human being alone. If God does not assist wi th an almighty act of creation, no man can procreate another man. Not even paren ts give souls to their offspring. Children don't get hand-me-down souls like the y get hand-me-down clothes. Only God can create souls, and He always creates new ones. That only God can create human souls was once contested by theologians. Tertulli an, an early theologian in the Church (155-c.220), theorized that parents give s ouls to their children. He thought that this was an easy way to explain how pare nts pass on original sin to their offspring. This lawyer had a passion for preci sion. Another theologian in France, Irenaeus of Lyons who was born 30 years befo re Tertullian, (125-203), who is known as the Father of Catholic Theology, had e xplained that it is in some mystic sense that original sin is transmitted from A dam to us. Tertullian sniffed at mystic meanings. He sought a simpler explanatio n. So he invented the idea that parents beget the souls of their children. Adam sinned first, and then passed on sinful souls to his children, and in this fashi on we all get souls infected with original sin. Tertulian was always blunt in his writings and usually highly charged with anger . To his credit, he formulated a new thesaurus of theological terminology by whi ch the Roman Church could define dogmas sharply and avoid pitfalls of ambiguity which dogged the Eastern Church and sometimes tore her apart. For this he deserv es praise. But not for his doctrine of what is called "Traducianism." Not for hi s wrong idea that parents give souls to their children. Patience was not Tertullian's strong point. When he wrote about patience he conf essed that he felt like an invalid talking about health, since he himself was al ways sick with the fever of impatience. "Forever a fighter, he knew no relenting towards his enemies, whether pagans, Jews, heretics, or later on, Catholics. Al l his writings are polemic" (Quasten II,247). He was forever an advocate, out to

win his case, to annihilate his adversaries. Eventually he left the Church and joined the Montanists (see Quasten II, 248). The theory of Traducianism that parents beget the souls of their children as wel l as their bodies was never accepted by the Church. In a sense the theory would make the souls we receive at conception "second hand" souls, already used by our parents and their parents in turn, all the way through the generations until Ad am. If that were true, then if one's father was a swindler, his ways would presu mably be imprinted on the soul of his son. If the mother was an opera singer, he r daughter might be hired by the Grand Opera Company. Smart parents would have s mart children, dumb parents dull offspring. The truth is quite otherwise. God creates each human soul personally, by His own hand. We are all new creatures, newly minted by God, sparkling and brilliant as coins issuing from the mint. We are not hand-me-down personalities of parents. Parents present the gametes to build a new body. The soul is not in either of th e gametes before they fuse. When the haploid cells fuse at fertilization, God, i f He so wills, creates a new person. The fused cell then materializes as a new h uman being. The Pontifical Academy for Life, on July 9, 1997, declared that human cloning, i f done, would not duplicate a person. The clone would duplicate body structures, but not personal identity. The Academy stated that the spiritual soul cannot be generated by the parents, cannot be produced by artificial fertilization, canno t be cloned (see The Pope Speaks, 1998, p. 28). The ultimate particles of matter within the gametes of parents, like bricks in a wall, are undifferentiated. These minute particles are interchangeable. If all my particles of matter were to migrate into you and your particles into me, neit her of us would change. We would remain just as we are now. The building element s are not life. Life shapes up the particles into a living body. Particles can't do that by themselves. The soul grabs these particles and holds them in place. It shapes the body along the structural lines of the blue prints which are the g enes. The parents present the gametes which contain the initial building materia ls and genetic structures. But it is God who, by almighty power, creates the sou l which brings the gametes into new life. Once God creates the soul that person will live on forever. The soul is a spiritual substance more powerful and enduri ng than matter. Yet, as Lactantius declared long ago, souls cannot reproduce oth er souls, as bodies reproduce bodies: A body may be produced from a body, since something is contributed from both; bu t a soul cannot be produced from souls, because nothing can depart from a slight and incomprehensible subject. Therefore the manner of the production of souls b elongs entirely to God alone...For nothing but what is mortal can be generated f rom mortals... From this it is evident that souls are not given by parents, but by one and the same God and Father of all, who alone controls the law and method of their birth, since He alone produces them (De opif. 19, 1 ff; see Quasten II , 408-9). St. Ambrose (340-397) repudiated Traducianism; so did St. Jerome (c.342-420) who grumped that this error excluded Tertullian from being a "man of the Church." W ith such clear opposition from the big powers, Traducianism was excluded from ga ining a niche in accepted Church doctrine. Origen: Pre-existence of Souls Origen (185-253) had still another idea about the existence of human souls. Orig en's father was a fervent Christian who became a martyr. When Origen wanted to g o out to become a martyr too, his resourceful mother had other ideas. She hid hi s clothes so he couldn't leave the house to join his father in martyrdom, and th ereby saved his life for the Church (Quasten II, 37).

Not long after this, in 203, Bishop Demetrius put the young Origen in charge of the famous School of Alexandria in Egypt. He proved to be an intellectual giant, a prodigy with an encyclopedic mind. He also drew to his school capable student s who greatly influenced the intellectual currents of the Church. For twenty eight years (203-231) Origen presided at the School of Alexandria as an intellectual and formative leader in the Church. Unfortunately, influenced by the philosophy of Plato, he theorized that souls are fallen celestial spirits w ho are now inserted into bodies. In a former life, thought Origen, these souls o ffended God. God then punished them by banishing them from the celestial sphere. He cast them down to earth and imprisoned them into human bodies for purificati on and restoration. Each of us, so theorized Origen, lived once before and commi tted sins in that previous existence. God then inserted us into bodies to do pen ance. Origen developed this theory in his De Principiis, I, 5, 6, 7 (see Tennant 297). According to him, if souls sinned much in their previous lives, they woul d be born dumb and dull into their bodies; but if they had been relatively good before, they would be born as bright people into our present world: Whence some are found from the very commencement of their lives to be of more ac tive intellect, others again of a slower habit of mind, and some are born wholly obtuse, and altogether incapable of instruction (De Princ. II, 9, 3-4). Is it not more in conformity with reason, that every soul, for certain mysteriou s reasons (I speak now according to the opinion of Pythagoras, and Plato, and Em pedocles, whom Celsus frequently names), is introduced into a body and is introd uced according to its deserts and former actions? (Contra Cels. 1,32; see Quaste n II,91-92). When Origen moved to Palestinian Caesarea he was confronted there with the pract ice of baptizing infants. He noted that "the Church received a tradition from th e Apostles, to baptize even infants" (Com. in Rom 5; see Tennant 300). The Bapti sm of children to forgive original sin inherited from Adam didn't square with hi s own theory that these children had once lived a sinful life themselves. His th eory never became Church doctrine. Against the quaint views of pioneer theologians Tertullian and Origen, Catholic teaching states categorically that souls do not exist anywhere before they are o utfitted with bodies. If they were created today, they were not there yesterday. They were neither in their parents, nor in heaven nor on earth nor even in the bosom of God. Our souls never stood in line waiting for our turn to receive bodi es. Before God created us we were nothing. Simply nothing. God acts anew with di vine power each time He creates another person. As The Catechism of the Catholic Church proclaims: 366 The Church teaches that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God - it is not "produced" by the parents -- and also that it is immortal: it does n ot perish when it separates from the body at death, and it will be reunited with the body at the final Resurrection. What follows from all this? We ask legitimately, will God create a soul if clone rs put together a viable body? The George Washington University Cloning Experiment Before we begin a moral evaluation of cloning, let us review some of the technic al material. We begin with an experiment done in 1993 at George Washington Unive rsity. You may have read conflicting reports about it as I did, but I believe th at the following description provided by Dr. Antonio Pardo in Dolentium Hominum is factual (No. 36, 1997,3, pp. 28-31). One of his primary references is to an a rticle in Fertility and Sterility (1993;60, 2 sup., S1) two of whose authors J.L . Hall and R.J. Stillman, the researchers who did the experiment.

The researchers, explains Dr. Pardo, took seventeen embryos which were left-over s from in vitro reproduction attempts, and which were not viable because they we re triploids, that is, two spermatozoa had penetrated a single ovule. The initia l seventeen triploid embryos were at various stages of development consisting of two, four and eight cells. The researchers withdrew them from within the zona p ellucida, then separated the embryos into single cell units by means of micro-ma nipulation. These single cells where then placed into a cultivation medium with polyalginate which replaced the zona pellucida and permitted further growth. The results were as follows: when the original embryo was eight cells, the singl e cells vivisected from it developed into two, then four, then at most into eigh t cells and then stopped. When the original was four, the dissected single cells could multiply at most into sixteen. But when the original embryo was only two cells, the single cells multiplied to 2, then to 4, 8, 16, and 32 cell stage sti ll in good condition; it is not known whether they could have developed more. Ha ll and Stillman stopped the experiment at this point. It would have been necessa ry to implant them to continue their further development. Dr. Pardo points out that we do not know whether the same results could be obtai ned with normal two cell embryos, but we have reason to suspect that it would be possible. We can already see this in animal studies and from spontaneous human twinning. But cloning two-cell embryos in this fashion is not clinically helpful . It does not yield more embryos suitable for in vitro reproduction. The mortali ty rate due to manipulation is so high that less rather than more embryos would survive for implantation. Human embryos, observes Dr. Pardo, "are much more deli cate than bull-calf embryos, on which the division of embryos from choice races is being successfully practiced, though with very low effectiveness as well." St illman and Hall were at first acclaimed for their experiment, but a public outcr y arose against their action. They eventually returned the prize they had gained for their work because they had not obtained a required previous clearance from an independent ethics committee for their protocol. They were also subjected to other sanctions. After the research was publicized, Pope John Paul II, on 20 November 1993, react ed firmly and strongly. "The embryo has to be recognized as a being subject to t he laws of nations, otherwise we are endangering humanity," he said (AFP-Jiji). We conclude this section about multiplying human embryos by means of vivisection , which likely has no future. It is a method which, even if successful, would no t produce a clone of an adult person. It could possibly result in producing iden tical twins instead of a single new baby, etc., but that would not be something people are looking for. The Cloning of Dolly the Sheep The more likely direction cloning might take is the pattern followed to produce Dolly Two from Dolly One, the original sheep. The same Dr. Pardo provides the fo llowing description of the process used to clone Dolly the sheep at the Roslin I nstitute in Scotland. Dr. Ian Wilmot headed the project, and Dr. Ron James is us ually named together with him as researcher. Dolly the clone was born on 25 Febr uary 1997, and immediately set the media buzzing with excitement, oftentimes mor e fanciful than realistic. Before the attempts were made to clone with a cell from an adult animal, the Ros lin Institute had previously pioneered a way to render embryonic cells dormant, which was the crucial step toward later success. They took embryo cells and mani pulated them into a dormant state. To do this they placed them into a culture me dium, and diminished the concentration of nutritive proteins in the medium in su ccessive stages from 10% all the way down to only 0.5%. The cells then halted th eir division. In other words, they became dormant. Dr. Pardo describes what foll

owed: In this way, it was possible to halt the division of cells in cultivation. In an other action, ovules were taken and their nucleus was extracted by aspiration th rough a micropipette. As a final step, the cultivated cells [which were now dorm ant] and the enucleated ovules were placed in contact and subjected to a brief e lectric pulsation for two purposes: on the one hand, to create micropores in the membrane of the two cells placed in contact and so to produce a fusion; on the other, to open the calcium channels in the membrane, provoking a reaction simila r to the one caused by the spermatozoon on fertilizing the ovule and starting up the whole cell metabolism and the development of the new being (p.29). The success of this fusion when using embryonic cells was next applied to cells taken from the mammalian glands of an adult sheep Dolly. There must be a reason for taking it from the udder of Dolly, not from other parts of her anatomy. I su spect the reason is that mammalian tissue, which initiates new growth when the e we is pregnant for the first time, has cells which possess some of the dynamism of embryonic cells and may therefore be more responsive to cloning attempts than other cells of an adult body. At any rate, they took a cell from an adult ewe's udder and fused it with an ovule from which the nucleus had been extracted. The process differed in the number of steps which had to be taken in cultivation to bring the cell into the dormant state. The effectiveness of the technique was v ery low. From the fusion of 277 enucleated ovules with the corresponding cultiva ted cells, only 29 embryos were obtained and transferred to sheep. That's about one out of ten. From these twenty-nine in turn, only one lamb was born, Dolly Tw o. This is not exactly cloning or replicating a single adult cell, since two cells are used, the one taken from an adult tissue which is then juxtaposed and fused with the enucleated ovule cell. The DNA of the nucleus from the adult cell, howe ver, is singular in number, and makes a new run in Dolly Two. Other animal clones followed Dolly Two in rapid succession: monkey clones and a bull calf in America; Holly and Belle female calves in Holland; and a calf in Fr ance to which was given the elegant name "Marguerite." Nature magazine (1997;385:769-71) commented that the "importance of the experime nt lies in the empirical demonstration that the mere stoppage of cell reproducti on seems to reprogram the genetic system and enable it to begin embryonic develo pment again until it reaches adulthood" (Pardo, 29). In other words, by stopping a cell's replication process, they set the genome sequences back to zero, ready to start a second run. Dr. Pardo points out, however, that programmed genetic s equences alone do not produce an adult. Genes are not independent of the rest of the organism. The DNA sequences react in coordination with the entire growing b ody of the embryo, and do not run as though they were independent of the growing body. Dr. Pardo explodes this simplistic theory: "The only way to induce the ap pearance of mature cells, starting from immature ones, is through complex intera ction with other tissues, as embryologists well know; differentiated tissues may be obtained only in a complete embryo. The proposal to discover the keys to gen etic programming and its application to obtain specific tissues is impossible, s ince it starts from an error concerning the basic concepts of embryology" (p. 30 ). On the other hand, to produce certain types of differentiated tissues in the laboratory, simple physical or chemical changes suffice, without need of the usu al genetic inductor. [Addition, June 2000: the recently discovered ability to ma nipulate the growth of stem cells to become specific tissue outdates, to some ex tent at least, the assertion of Dr. Pardo that differentiated tissue can be obta ined only in a complete embryo.] As for human cloning, Dr. Wilmut and others oppose it for two reasons. Although they admit that it may be technically possible, it should never be attempted bec ause it is a behavioral aberration and it lacks clinical utility. Furthermore, t

he new person would be a different individual from the parent clone. One cannot recover, for example, a deceased person; it would always be a new person, like a twin brother born a generation later. Dr. Pardo states: "This new person would be influenced by his own cultural situation, experiences, family life options, a nd so on. It would thus be pure chance to manage to have an Einstein, a great at hlete, or an artist once again by cloning one of that person's cells" (p.31). The Second Run of DNA Sequences in the Clone I would like to speculate a bit with you about hazards of development of a clone before birth. His DNA is making a second run of the sequences of growth and dev elopment which that same DNA had made once before. During the first run, the seq uences were responding flexibly to environmental influences, especially to vario us substances entering its system via the placenta. We think of nicotine, alcoho l, drugs, residues of synthetic steroids, dioxins, well-balanced or ill-balanced diet of the mother, and others. The DNA, while engineering the normal paths of usual total development during its second run, would also react sensitively once more to the changed fetal environment. In the previous run it had engineered pa tterns of compensation to shore up damage from the environment, but may also hav e produced some defects and malformations. In other words, the history of the fi rst run through the sequences is now written into the patterns of the genome of the adult cell that is making its second run. The clone will make this second run through the DNA sequences during the period of its nine-month long development in the uterus of the surrogate mother. Has ev erything in its genome been set back to zero so that the second run is as flexib le to respond to fetal environment as was the first run? Or does the new clone i nherit all the fortuitous and compensatory and damaged patterns set during that first run? If the latter, it is not well equipped to meet the new environment wi thout aggravating and compounding various inherited deformations as it interacts unsuitably to the new and present environment; and its patterns and sequences m ay be set too rigidly to respond with due flexibility to various environmental c ircumstances. We may find it plausible to suppose that if the fetal environment during the nin e months of the second run were always and ever exactly the same as it had been during the first run, the child would be born after nine months without excessiv e difficulties and as a pretty exact replica of its parent clone. But we know th at the environment is not going to be exactly the same, and the trend would be t oward more damage rather than less. If the former run of sequences was set hard as cement in patterns tailored to the environment during the first run, this is going to cause trouble when the environment is quite different during the second run. May that be one reason why only one of twenty-nine fetuses cloned from Dol ly One made it to become Dolly Two? This speculation, at any rate, appears to ma ke it all the more absurd to imagine that a cloned twin brother, born a generati on later and developed in a different mother than the parent clone, will be exac tly like the parent when it is born. And that is only the beginning. The physica l and psychological environment during growth to adulthood will prevent the offs pring clone from becoming an adult exactly like its parent clone. Philosophical Considerations Let us assume for the sake of discussion that it would be possible to clone huma ns by the method which produced Dolly the sheep. We ask whether the Creator woul d then create a soul to enliven the fused human cell. The answer is likely to be yes. God usually prefers to remain hidden so as not to deprive us of freedom to believe in Him or to refuse belief. He hides Himself from our eyes in this life so that our faith remains voluntary and free. It was St. Augustine who once sai d that if at the time of Baptism God would make the body immortal while He clean ses the soul of Original Sin, everyone would flock to Baptism, and faith would b ecome too much like vision. We might reason that if God would not create souls w

hen humans sin, when they fornicate, or commit rape, or do cloning, ce our faith. He remains hidden to enable our faith to be free. St. as also observed that the natural process of conception proceeds as fter adultery because the sin of the free will does not become part gical process. The child remains innocent of the sin, he assures us ontra Gentiles, II,89,16).

He would for Thomas Aquin usual even a of the biolo (see Summa C

We may assume, I believe, that God would create souls for clones if technicians present viable biological materials. God does not usually stop evil by interveni ng visibly. He asks us to desist from doing evil in the first place. Dr. Luc Gor mally, Director of the Linacre Centre, London, observes that when human biologic al materials are all in place, they are in a condition ready to receive a ration al soul (Dolentium Hominum 28 (1995) pp. 27-31). Cloners are technological rapists. Sex rapists seek gratification through brute force against hapless victims. Technological rapists gratify an irresponsible lu st for power by manufacturing children who have no parents. It is impossible to clone in a manner by which they can give a father and a mother to the child. A c loned child would have no father, no mother. It would be an orphan. It is a prod uct of technology. Microscopes and pincettes are not parents. But every child ha s a right to parents; it is a universal right. Whether the cloner seeks to produce a super race by eugenic improvement; whether narcissistic impulses drive him to reproduce his own precious self; whether he intends to provide entertainers, sports champions, literary geniuses, even a pop ulation of Einsteins for human welfare, he wrongs the child whom he manipulates to achieve a child clone. A cloned child is a slave produced for the good of oth ers, not for its own good. It is treated like property managed for the benefit o f others. It is not treated with the dignity of a human being who belongs to him self and to God, but to no other human person. This is the heart of the matter. As philosopher John Crosby writes: Human beings are never rightly owned as mere property, but should be recognized as individuals who each has a certain ownership of his or her own being...It is in virtue of our personhood that we can never be used or owned... Each human per son is a subject of rights. To violate another's basic human rights is to invade the sphere of what is his own; a person has rights because he belongs to himsel f (John F. Crosby, "Human Person" in Our Sunday Visitor's Encyclopedia of Cathol ic Doctrine, p. 307). There are a myriad other philosophical and social reasons against cloning, inclu ding laws about inheriting properties from parents, laws about nationality by bi rth, undetermined relationship with siblings, and laws against commercial traffi c in human beings. Cloning for profit could become a huge business. Just select your preferences from the catalogue and pay up. If cloning were done it would radically exploit women, evaluating their worth by genes, ova and wombs. The Pontifical Academy for Life observed that the basic r elationships of the human person would be subverted, namely "filiation, consangu inity, kinship, parenthood. A woman can be the twin sister of her mother, lack a biological father and be the daughter of her grandmother." ("Human Cloning is I mmoral" July 9 1997, see The Pope Speaks, 1998, p. 29). Moreover "there will be a growing conviction that the value of man and woman does not depend on their pe rsonal identity but only on those biological qualities that can be appraised and therefore selected." The cloners would be expecting the desired results from th eir clone, "and this would constitute a true and proper attack on his personal s ubjectivity" (p. 30). When the Pontifical Academy for Life met again in February 1998, they again issued a complete condemnation of efforts to clone human being s (CWNEWS, 3/3/98). The prime and non-negotiable reason against cloning is that this method of bring

ing people to life is contrary to the dignity and rights of a human being. Each person is a subject with rights, who exists for himself, not for exploitation by others. He is one single sovereign personality. He is an image of God who is Pe rsonal Existence. The Lord God says "I am who am." His image, the human person s ays: "I am me, I am myself. You can't own me, because I own myself, and I'm not for sale." Cloning is as wrong as slavery. Theological Considerations The procreation of a new human being is a partnership project; humans work in pa rtnership with God. Unless God gives consent to the action, the human partners a ct against their divine Partner. God does not consent to human cloning. His rule is: "Thou shalt not bring children to life except through a father and a mother joined in matrimony." We believe this in the light of our own insight into what is right and wrong; we believe it also because the Church teaches this evident truth. Whether cloning is right or wrong depends not on whether it can be done or undon e. Cloners are subject to God just as every other human being is subject to Him. Because we are not God, we dare not defy Him by manipulating human life in a ma nner contrary to His will. The Bible tells us how God created Adam: "The Lord God formed man of dust from t he ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a l iving being" (Gen 2:7). God created would-be cloners in the same way. They will all die tomorrow, as Adam died yesterday. After they die, cloners would will have no paid attorneys to defend their action against God the Judge. Escape from God they cannot. God will ask them, as He as ked Adam: "What did you do?" That's when every cloner will have to give an accou nt of himself. Even if cloning were 100% successful; even if cloners would not kill ten or a hu ndred or a thousand young lives in unsuccessful attempts, but would succeed ever y time; even so, cloning would always be a transgression against God's law. And whatever is done against God's law damages human society in the long run. All of God's laws undergird the welfare of the human race. God made us for Himself, not for indulging a lust for power of play-boy scientis ts, nor for profit-making by clone dealers. God made us for Himself, to live her e for Him, to live hereafter with Him. To start us on our way, He wants us to be born of a father and a mother into a loving family circle, there to give us a f air start on our journey toward heaven. Our Souls, Made for God, Are Not for Sale We cannot see our souls, cannot feel them, cannot weigh them. But God made our s ouls so robust that no power on earth can destroy them. The ball on a wrecker's crane cannot smash them. An atomic reactor cannot melt them down. Like Daniel an d his companions, our souls can dance and sing even in a super-heated furnace. Can our souls do anything in this life which is pure soul-action, independent of joint action together with the body? In one sense, yes. We do it all the time. We think without the body, then use the brain as a movie screen on which to proj ect our thoughts, to sort them out, to make them more visible and palpable. Our brain can't think by itself any more than a violin can play itself. A violin nee ds an artist to resonate sweet sounds, and our brain needs spiritual thoughts of the soul to do any thinking. Our brain then helps the soul to align its thought s in proper order, especially through the faculty of human speech. Let us reflec t for a few moments on the marvels of human speech.

When speaking, we maneuver our speech organs and send a pressured airstream thro ugh them which originates in the lungs and is issued under pressure generated by the diaphragm bellows and surrounding musculature. By varying the tension of ou r drawn vocal cords we set the pitch of the tone. When we qualify and format the se tonal frequencies of intermittent air jets by shaping and resonating them wit hin the supralaryngeal tract, and exit this speech-calibrated stream of air, our neighbor can comprehend the thought which is in our mind; that thought which th e nerves of the brain have translated into electro-chemical signals, which our s peech organs have released into the air as articulated air pressure variance sig nals. If the recipient knows the language of the speaker, these air pressure sig nals carry a semantic code for the listener. The people who know us even recogni ze the individual resonance and clipped articulation of our voice, which has our personal trademark. What we do by speaking is nothing short of the phenomenal. Eric H. Lennenberg, w hen recording three radio newscasters, found that they spoke an average of 5.7, 5.9, and 6.0 syllables per second. For each syllable there are about 2.4 phoneme s, distinguishable sound-coded identities; that totals about fourteen phonemes p er second (6 X 2.4). All the while we form and reform our air passage to resonat e and articulate the sound. The passage from one phoneme into another -- its ons et, the phone itself, and then the subsequent transition -- depends ultimately u pon the differences in muscle adjustments. The brain gives the muscles their pro per orders to contract, to relax, or to hold their tonus. At least one hundred m uscles are engaged simultaneously. The brain therefore sends these fourteen hund red orders per second to produce the phonemes in rapid succession to the targete d 100 engaged muscles (see Lennenberg, 91-92). If we admire piano virtuosos who can play 16-20 notes per second, all the more do we marvel our speech automatism s with which may be doing up to 1400 articulations per second with perfect ease - 70 times faster than the flying fingers of the piano virtuoso. The brain does not just fire off the fourteen hundred orders per second at rando m. It issues the electro-chemical neural transmissions in that magnitude of powe r and that order of sequence at which we are giving command. The arrival of the nerve's electro-chemical transmission at the target muscle must be in proper seq uence, and its strength must stimulate the correct amplitude of the twitch of th at muscle. The brain fires the signals from its motor strip terminal in a flurry of activity, subject to our conscious will to speak. Because some muscles are m ore distant from the source than others, the sequence of firing may need to be t imed in reverse. Moreover, some of the nerves are thick and blitz the signal to the target muscle at about three hundred miles per hour, whereas other extremely fine nerves send the signal at a leisurely walking pace of 1.5 miles per hour. The brain must compute for distance and speed by firing the signals to coordinat e the pull of the muscles to be exactly on split-second schedule to produce spee ch in proper order. Sometimes things get mixed up or go awry, and the ear, which monitors what is happening, admonishes us to correct ourselves and repeat, this time correctly. The short term memory keeps constant tabs on the on-going conve rsation and keeps our thoughts connected. We can do all this with apparent ease and embellish what we say with added elega nce of sparkling eyes, smiling face, and lilting voice when we deliver pleasant thoughts. Or, we can express displeasure by making the voice grate and rasp, by curling the lips, tweaking the nose, arching the eyebrows, clenching the fists, bulging the neck, erecting the hair, flushing the face scarlet, and flashing bol ts of lightning from the eyes. Whether we speak with cooing love or with a tower ing rage, we can authenticate our intended meaning with these additional signs o f communication. Of course the brain doesn't pioneer all this every time we initiate verbal conve rsation. The brain is not an amateur but a seasoned professional, performing wel

l after much practice. Our speech capabilities began to develop early, taking of f at high speed around the age of two. The wiring of the brain for language abil ity is perfected only gradually. We marvel at the great abilities of our human s ouls when we reflect upon the marvels of human speech. The soul can do even more than thinking its own thoughts. The soul was made by G od who is Spirit; by God who dwells within us, and communicates with us; we can hear what God speaks to our souls. He whispers to us His commandments, His endea ring words of love. He sanctifies us with truth. Christ prayed for us at the Las t Supper: "Holy Father, keep them in thy name, which thou has given me, that the y may be one, even as we are one...Sanctify them in the truth. They word is trut h." Animals cannot speak with God. We can. The Lord gave us souls by which He ca n sanctify us for eternal life. God Made Us For Himself Why did God make you and me? The Catechism tells us why. "God made me to know Hi m, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in heaven." Away, then, with the manipulation of humans by cloning. We are made for God, not for a cloner's pleasure. Let's say it together to confound the clo ners and to give honor to God. Answer the question altogether then, and loud as I ask it: Why did God make you: "God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to se rve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in heaven." Thank you. References ALL, American Life League monthly, P.O. Box 1350, Stafford, Virginia 22555 USA. Aquinas, Saint Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles, trans. James F. Anderson, Doubleda y, New York, 1956. Dolentium Hominum, Journal of the Pontifical Council for Pastoral Assistance to Health Care Workers, published three times a year, Vatican. Quasten, Johannes, Patrology, II, The Newman Press, Wesminster, Maryland; Spectr um Publishers, Utrecht, Antwerp, 1943. Tennant, F.R., the Sources of the Doctrines of the Fall And Original Sin, Schoke n Books, New York, First published 1903, Schoken Edition, 1968.

In the movie Jurassic Park, based on the best-selling book of the same name by M ichael Crichton, scientists clone dinosaurs by using the DNA that was preserved for millions of years. However, there is trouble when the cloned dinosaurs turn out fiercer and smarter than expected. Can dinosaurs really be cloned? Theoretic ally, they can; all that would be required is DNA from an extinct dinosaur and a currently living closely related species which would act as a surrogate mother. In fact, there is ongoing research to clone the Woolly Mammoth by extracting th e DNA from frozen animals. Actually, cloning is a phenomenon that occurs naturally in a wide variety of spe cies from aphids to armadillos, to poplar trees, to bacteria. Whenever you see a pair of identical twins, they are examples of nature s clones. Although scientist s have been cloning certain organisms like the carrot quite successfully for dec ades, attempts at cloning animals have not been as successful. However, they beg an long before the birth of Dolly, the sheep the first mammal to be successfully cloned. There were sporadic successes at cloning other animals, like CC (abbrev

iation for copycat ), the first cat to be cloned, an Asian gaur, an endangered spec ies, which Bessie, a cow, gave birth to, and way back in the 1960 s, frogs being c loned, albeit with limited success. In fact, in the 1980s, some companies tried commercializing the cloning of livestock by the process of taking the nuclei fro m fetuses and embryos. These efforts generally resulted in failure because the n ewborns usually did not survive for long due to being unhealthy. Livestock cloni ng, currently, is still in the process of research. However, it is generally acc epted that in time the scientific viability of producing healthy clones will bec ome a reality. Although cloning other species does give rise to some misgivings, whether revivi ng extinct or endangered species, or to reproduce a dead pet, the prospect of cl oning humans artificially is one of the most controversial debates that the huma n species has been pondering about, raising a number of ethical issues involved. In fact, the social impact of producing humans artificially was brilliantly exp lored in the famous novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, and also in the movi e The Island. Human cloning is basically about creating a genetically identical replica of a p reviously existing or existing person. Why would anybody opt to clone human bein gs? Well, generally, it will be one more option by which infertile couples can h ave children. Replacing a deceased child is also another reason why some people have expressed interest in the procedure. There are various methods of human cloning: embryo cloning, reproductive cloning and therapeutic cloning. There is another method of cloning, known as replaceme nt cloning, which at present exists only in theory. It is a combination of both reproductive and therapeutic cloning. Replacement cloning involves replacing a b ody that has been extensively damaged, or has failed, or is in the process of fa iling, via cloning, followed by transplanting the brain either partially or enti rely. This procedure has been projected as a way of greatly extending human life span. Embryo Cloning: In this procedure, identical twins are produced, basically by re producing how twins are created naturally. A few cells are extracted from a fert ilized embryo, which are induced to develop into duplicate embryos. The twins th at are thus formed have identical DNA. Although this procedure has been used on various animal species, there has been only limited experimentation done on huma ns. Reproductive Cloning: In this procedure, the DNA is removed from an ovum and rep laced with the DNA extracted from a cell taken from an adult animal. Next, the f ertilized ovum, which is called a pre-embryo now, is implanted in a womb, which then develops into a new animal. Thus, this procedure basically produces a dupli cate of an existing person. Based on studies done on animals, it results in anim als being born with severe genetic defects. This is the main reason why many in the medical field think it to be a profoundly unethical procedure to be carried out on humans. It is specifically banned in many countries. However, there are r umors that this procedure has been used successfully to initiate a pregnancy by the controversial Italian embryologist, Dr Severino Antinori. Therapeutic Cloning: The initial stages of this procedure are practically the sa me as Reproductive Cloning. However, in this, the stem cells are extracted from the pre-embryo, with the intention of generating a whole organ or tissue, so tha t it can be transplanted back into the person who gave the DNA. The pre-embryo, however, dies during the process. The aim of therapeutic cloning is to create a healthy organ or tissue of a sick person, in order to transplant it into them, i nstead of relying on organs from other people. This eliminates the need of waiti ng lists for organs, and since the organ has the same DNA as the donor, there is no need to take immunosuppressive drugs, as is required now after transplantati

ons. At this nascent stage of cloning, there is no consensus yet about the ethical is sues that are thrown up by the process of the destruction of human embryos, so t hat stem cells can be collected. Many conservative Christians and others concern ed about the ethical issues of cloning think that the embryo is equivalent to a human being right at conception, and should be given the same rights. Since the process involved in the removal of DNA is similar to the process of conventional conception, because both create a pre-embryo, it is thought that the pre-embryo is a human person. In therapeutic cloning, the process of extracting stem cells , therefore, is equivalent to murdering the human being. Religious and ethically conservative people think it is ethically wrong to kill one person so that anot her person s life can be extended or saved. Others, however, are of the opinion that the embryo does not require any particu lar moral consideration, because at the stage when it is cloned, it is just a bu nch of cells that contain DNA, and are not very different from the millions of s kin cells that we shed everyday. The embryonic cells at that stage cannot be con sidered equivalent to a human being because it does not have a brain, thoughts, self-awareness, memory, awareness of its environment, sensory organs, internal o rgans, legs, arms, and so on. They think that the embryo attains human personhoo d much later during gestation, perhaps at the point when the brain develops so t hat it becomes aware of itself. Here are some questions concerning the ethical issues of cloning humans for you to ponder about: Is cloning humans "playing God?" If it is, then how about other reproductive pro cedures like hormone treatments and in vitro fertilization? Does an embryo, at whatever stage of its existence, have the same rights as huma n beings? Do we have the right to have children, regardless of how they are created? Is it justified to create stem cells by killing a human embryo? Is it ethically right to harvest organs from clones? If a clone is created from an existing person, who is the parent? Will cloned children face any social repercussions? If so, what? Can cloned children be manipulated to become monsters, like Hitler, or slaves, a s is explored in Brave New World? Should the research in cloning by regulated? If so, who should regulate it, and how can it be regulated?

he Ethics of Human Cloning BY WAYNE JACKSON Share Cloning has been a volatile topic in the news of e House of Lords recently voted 212 to 92 in favor h will attempt to clone human beings even though ders (Roman Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, late. In England, for example, th of promoting experiments whic a conglomerate of religious lea and Sikhs) petitioned the pol

iticians to pause and study the ethical issues involved in such an ambitious ent erprise. There are those in this country who would take us down the same road. What is Cloning? The word clone derives from the Greek term klon, meaning a sprout or twig. It refers t o a method of reproduction apart from the parental, sexual-mating process that i s characteristic of most organisms. Cloning a human being would involve the following process: The cell nucleus of a n adult person would be removed from an ordinary body cell (e.g., a skin cell). Since the nucleus of each cell (red blood cells excepted) contains all of the ge netic information (the DNA) for a complete human being, a nucleus extracted from a donor would be transplanted into an unfertilized host egg cell (the nucleus o f which had been removed). Supposedly, then, the embryo transplanted into some w oman s rent-a-uterus would develop, ultimately producing an exact copy of the person whose original DNA provided the starter. In theory, one could, by this method, Xer ox himself hundreds of times! The Reality of Cloning Many still believe that cloning occurs only in science fiction. For example, in 1978 Gregory Peck starred in a film called The Boys From Brazil. The story line had to do with a plan undertaken by a group of South American Nazi scientists wh o wanted to clone a batch of little Hitlers. Real cloning, however, has been around for some time approximately 40 years. Fro gs were first cloned from asexual tadpole cells in 1952. In 1997, there was much notoriety surrounding the cloning of a sheep ( Dolly ) in Scotland. Will humans actually be cloned in the laboratory? I do not know. Scientists may be able to manipulate certain biological laws to evil ends. In their valuable bo ok, Human Cloning Playing God or Scientific Progress? (Grand Rapids, MI: Fleming Revell / Baker Book House, 1998), Drs. Lane P. Lester and James C. Hefley sugge sted that on a scale of one to ten, scientists are at about a 9.9 on the human c loning project and that was three years ago! One thing we do know, man s ability t o achieve certain effects far outstrips his ethical values. It is wrong to conce ive a child outside the bonds of marriage, but it happens all the time. It is im moral to murder a fellow human being, but the technology for so doing is availab le in abundance. The Moral Implications of Cloning While there is no apparent ethical offence in cloning a carrot, or even a frog, such is not the case with people. Contrary to the arrogant assertions of the Dar winists, humans are not mere animals that have evolved from biological slime. Th ey are creatures specially fashioned by God; which means they are unique in thei r nature. The Christian, therefore, must condemn the cloning of human beings (in the event that such should actually occur), on the following bases: One must first raise this question? Why do scientists want to clone human beings ? It certainly is not because they are anxious to generate a larger population f or our planet. They continually protest that the earth is over-crowded already. Rather, they are anxious to create a brand of humans with whom they can experime nt. It is the same mentality that seized Adolf Hitler during that dreadfully dar k era of World War II. In reality, this would be nothing short of a form of slav ery. In the meantime, as a by-product of the process, thousands of tiny human be ings would be destroyed in this misguided quest, which, allegedly is intended to improve the quality of human life. A more illogical position could scarcely be imagined. In the December, 1998 issue of the prestigious journal, Scientific American, the re appeared an article titled Cloning For Medicine. The author, Dr. Ian Wilmut, wh o is associated with the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh, Scotland (where Dolly wa s cloned), argued for the cloning of human embryos. The basis of his rationale w as that this would be helpful in research leading to the treatment of certain di

seases (e.g., AIDS, Parkinson s, diabetes, etc.). He argued his position on the gr ound that the embryonic cells have not begun to differentiate, the nervous syste m is not developed enough to feel pain, or sense its environment, etc. On the other hand, Dr. Wilmut contended that it is not ethically acceptable to c lone adult human beings. His standards, however, are purely arbitrary. These sci entists would be gods! Human uterine development is a matter of degree (growth); it is not an evolutionary advancement where one kind of organism changes into ano ther. Any onslaught against a fellow human being, regardless of his stage of developme nt, is ultimately against God. The first formal legislation against murder was g rounded in the truth that people are in the image of God (Gen. 9:6; cf. 1:26-27). The implication from that clearly is this: To arbitrarily destroy a human being, i.e., without explicit authority from the Giver of life (see Acts 17:25), is an assault upon the Creator himself. Human beings were designed to be a part of a family relationship involving a lov ing father and mother. The family unit existed from the first day of man s existence upon the earth (Gen. 2:18ff; 4:1). Children are to be introduced into earth s env ironment as a part of this protective and stable arrangement. God never intended for people to be cranked off an assembly line like so many pieces of machinery. This is such a fundamental principle that even the most obtuse ought to recogni ze it. Human cloning would be a moral atrocity! In conclusion, we happily acknowledge the following points. The arguments introd uced above are grounded in the following premises. There is a God who exercises sovereignty over the human family. He has revealed his will to man in that series of documents called the Bible. Those inspired pieces of literature contain the principles by which the morality of human actions are to be either approved or condemned. If one does not accept the proposition that a Supreme Moral Being has regulated human conduct, and that He revealed the code for such in an objective body of re velation, he is without a precise moral compass. Correspondingly, if one subscribes to the concept that man is his own god, with th e liberty to make whatever rules suit his fancy, then there is no stopping place in the arena of human experimentation. Life becomes a cheap, expendable commodi ty. Indeed, human existence degenerates into a nightmare of unimaginable proport ions. Are we headed for that eventuality?