We’re All God’s Creatures--Even If Cloned

Tuesday in Washington, two doctors announced to the National Academy of Sciences that they are proceeding--somewhere outside the United States--to clone human beings for the benefit of infertile couples, some of whom live in the U.S.

I can’t imagine a more humiliating segue than to make such an announcement less than a week after the House voted to make cloning illegal in the U.S. But if we ever needed a reminder of the impotence of ignorance in the face of progress, Drs. Severino Antinori of Rome, and Panayiotis Zavos of Lexington, Ky., have provided a doozy. What’s the big deal anyway? That we would “make” human beings? We make human beings all the time.

Or is it that we would make identical human beings to others that exist? Well, we already make clones--they’re called identical twins, triplets, etc. These occur naturally only rarely. And so would cloning occur rarely, to help infertile couples. I counsel couples who need extraordinary means to conceive. Some of these couples later give birth to genetically identical twins or triplets--i.e., clones.

Maybe what appalls us is the idea of a sequential clone--an identical human born a generation later. Ah, there’s the rub. The weird notion that one would be so narcissistic as to clone oneself and raise that child as one’s own son or daughter. Or the idea that Shaq would clone quintuplets of himself to give the world the perfect basketball team. Or, even weirder, having several sequential clones of an existing human being. One could have three children, all identical to oneself and yet born two years apart. Thus, raising oneself, over and over and over again.

Understandably, these notions make us uncomfortable. But they all suffer from the same delusion: that human beings are only clumps of DNA. We are more, so much more, than our genes. In fact, the greatest arguments for human cloning are the clones that God has created naturally. How different they grow to be. How unique they are. How wonderfully human they are. Let’s call these clones exactly what they are: children.

The extremes that some worry about with cloning should not blind us to the very human needs and yearnings of ordinary people. A husband and wife who have tried and failed over many years to conceive a child should be eligible for this procedure. Or couples who want a genetic relationship to the offspring they bear. Or couples who want to avoid the certainty of passing on disease and suffering to their children.

Man should not play God--this is the more common objection. I agree. I like to think that we play with God. Even the Apostle Paul said that we are “co-laborers” with God. Call it play or work, it’s clear that God has invited us to share in activity that is divine. Do we not already participate in the divine act of procreation with the consent, nay, at the command of God?: “Go forth and multiply.” Nowhere in the Bible does it add: But don’t use any technology.

In the past, without technology, a premature baby likely would have died; a heart patient would not have had the hope of a transplant; an infertile couple would have had no recourse except adoption.

No one argues that we should return to those times. Nor should we stop moving toward a time when cloning takes its inevitable place among the means available to us to make this a better life.

So why don’t we all just get a grip and understand that the progress of human technology is a gift from God and not an assault on God’s divinity.