Bioengineering: Multiplicity just around the corner

Oct 1999

Next Wave: www.next-wave.org: Oct 1999

Bioengineering ( Man Playing God!! ) By Moses Garcia

Multiplicity may be just around the corner: How should a Christian respond?

[What Scientific American has to say about cloning for medicine]

Imagine being able to clone your self, to have a perfect replica of your self, but younger. Think of all the lessons you could teach him or her all the lessons that you failed in life. With your wisdom, he could live the perfect life, the one you could not. Now imagine having to explain to the this little "You" that he is a copy of you. That you were his father, but that you were really not his father but your father was his father, so that makes him your brother even though he was really only a copy of you. Confused yet.

Now imagine a clinic that gave you designer babies. Yes, you could pick all the features: the hair, eyes, skin color, gender, if he/she was tall, intelligent and even get a warranty.

Sound like a SCI/FI channel movie of the week or something that may happen in the future, guess again. The future is now. Right now, the cloning of a human being is possible and the process for designer babies is being patented.

What's stopping other countries from cloning humans?
In the US, the only reason we have not seen or heard about a human clone is because of the five year ban that Clinton put on cloning three years ago. But just because we can't do it, what’s stopping other countries like China and Iraq from experimenting? Not a thing. So the Big Q is when will human engineering appear and how as Christians will we react to it. When a person is cloned does he have a soul? If we can design babies, can we design them with out hate or malice, in short with out SIN? Are we playing God ? Well, like all Christians these are hard questions to tackle. Thank God that we have the Bible for the final word.

Let’s discuss cloning first. It’s not really new, nature has its own form of cloning called identical twins. However, to take a person’s genes and clone them is truly dangerous .

1. Medical safety. One of the first clones was Dolly, the sheep. It took 12 tries and 23 deformed or dead fetuses to get it right. And they just found out that Dolly is just as old as the sheep she was cloned from. That means that if a child is cloned from a 30-year-old man, that the baby would be 30 years old, think of all the medical problems it could have. And what if a child came out deformed, would they just throw it away and start over 12 times.

2. Psychological harm . What about the child’s right to a family . Who will care for this child? The person who it was cloned from or the biological parents, if they are even still alive? Who is legally responsible?

3. Subservient individuals. What about people who want to make clones to make slaves or just to harvest them for the body parts? It’s there DNA, right?

4. Commercialized. And there is the fact of cloning for money. How much is a person worth? Will they be just a product or another share of stock to be sold on Wall Street.

And these are just a small list of the ethical and moral questions to be confronted. And when it comes to a designer baby, the list just grows. Being able to have the perfect child sounds fun but what is the perfect child (a white male, 6 feet tall, blue eyes and blonde. Can you say Hitler, boys and girls!)?

Here is a list of some Biblical principles to apply to these issues.

1. Protection of vulnerable human life. Scripture is clear in its call to protect human life, especially those lives that are most vulnerable (Deut. 10:17-19; Isaiah 1:16-17; Matt. 25:31-46). The biological technology of cloning is ethically unacceptable if it poses a disproportionate risk of harm to human life.

2. Protection of human dignity. Human beings were created in the image of God (Gen. 1:26-27) and were thus endowed with personal dignity that calls for respect and protection (Gen. 9:6). Cloning may threaten human dignity in a number of ways and should be approached with resolute moral vigilance. Any use of this technology that undermines or diminishes the personal dignity or autonomy of human beings should be rejected. This moral prohibition applies to all human cloning that would value human life primarily for its utilitarian function or commercial value.

3. Alleviating human suffering. It is a Christian responsibility to prevent suffering and to preserve the quality of human life (Acts 10:38; Luke 9:2). If it is possible to prevent genetic disease through the use of somatic cell nuclear transfer (cloning), the use of this technology may be in keeping with the goal of preventing avoidable suffering.

4. Family support. God's ideal plan is for children to develop in the context of a loving family with the presence, participation, and support of both mother and father (Prov. 22:6; Ps. 128:1-3; Eph. 6:4; I Tim. 5:8). Any use of somatic cell nuclear transfer as a means of assisting human reproduction should thus be within the context of marriage and support of stable family life. As with other forms of assisted reproduction, the involvement of third parties, such as surrogates, introduces moral problems that are best avoided.

5. Stewardship. The principles of Christian stewardship (Luke 14:28; Prov. 3:9) are important for all types of assisted human reproduction including the possibility of somatic cell nuclear transfer, which is likely to be very costly. Married couples seeking such assistance should consider the expenses involved in terms of their exercise of faithful stewardship.

6. Understanding God's creation. God intends for human beings to grow in their appreciation and understanding of His creation, which includes knowledge regarding the human body (Matt. 6:26-29; Ps. 8:3-9; Ps. 139:1-6; 13-16). For this reason, efforts to understand the biological structures of life, through ethical research, should be encouraged.

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