Life Issues Forum
How We Answer the Question of Human Cloning
by Cathleen A. Cleaver,
Esq.
April 12, 2002
On April 10, the President of
the United States gave his response to the question of human cloning. Quite
rightly, his answer was, in a word, “no.”
There is no other way to
approach human cloning. But banning human cloning does not, of course, mean
banning research – though its proponents would have us equate the two.
Just last week we learned of another inspiring breakthrough in the
area of adult stem cell research. A man with Parkinson’s disease found his
challenging symptoms greatly reduced by over 80% after his brain was treated
with his own neural cells. It’s beautiful, really-- as are most sensational
human achievements when they are in harmony with the laws of Nature and of
Nature’s God.
There is an ugliness to cloning that even its proponents
cannot hide. But they’ve tried. They’ve tried euphemisms like “therapeutic
cloning,” as if the little clone himself were receiving therapy! Reuters news
service went to great lengths to invent a nice name for it -- instead of
cloning, calling it a “technique aimed at helping patients grow their own
tissue transplants.” But dressing it up in pretty language will not disguise
this ugly business.
In China, where a repressive government has tried
to make its people almost insensible to the ugliness of immorality, scientists
forge ahead, creating cloned embryos by combining human DNA and rabbit eggs
and then killing them for their stem cells. We can’t help but look on this
with horror, while cloning proponents wish we would just look away.
They’ve also tried making exaggerated promises. Dr. Michael West told
a Senate subcommittee last December that human cloning would provide cures at
the rate of 3,000 per day. This is, of course, spectacularly untrue. But worse
than that, it’s cruel, because it gives people who are suffering the false
hope of imminent relief.
They’ve also tried threats. Forty Nobel laureate
scientists released a letter the day of the President’s address claiming that
a ban on cloning “would have a chilling effect on all scientific research in
the United States.” To be prevented from performing one bizarre procedure in
the future that they’ve never been able to do in the past will – what? –
prevent them from doing anything and everything? That sounds hysterical, but
then I’m no Nobel laureate.
President Bush says that human cloning
research would contradict the most fundamental norm of research ethics – that
no human life be exploited simply for the benefit of another. Anything else
would be barbarism. The exploitation wrought by human cloning would not be
limited to the cloned human, but extend to the countless women whose eggs
would be needed to make cloned embryos. It’s grisly – millions of women giving
up their eggs to scientists who will use them to create human beings whose
sole purpose in life is to be killed.
What an ugly contrast to God’s
beautiful plan.
_____________________
Cathleen Cleaver is Director
for Planning and Information at the Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities,
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
__________________________________
Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities
United States Conference of
Catholic Bishops
3211 4th Street, N.E., Washington, DC 20017-1194 (202)
541-3070