The Ethics of Human Cloning - At Issue | Introduction
Science and religion have frequently been in conflict throughout much of human history, but human cloning may be uniquely controversial among scientific developments due to the powerful, fundamental questions it raises. It leads both the secular and the religious to reflect on the nature of humanity, the concept of self, and the meaning of life.
The views of the world’s great religions on human cloning can have a profound impact on whether nations such as the United States eventually ban or legalize this controversial technology.
Judaism holds a fairly positive view of cloning. One of the fundamental tenets of Judaism is that God wants human beings to use all of their capacities to improve the health of others. In addition, Jewish law does not recognize the human embryo as a human being. Therefore, to the extent that therapeutic cloning, whereby scientists extract stem cells from embryos, could lead to cures for diseases, most Jewish scholars believe it should be allowed. The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America and the Rabbinical Council of America issued a policy statement on therapeutic cloning stating that because the procedure could lead to cures for devastating diseases, it should be allowed. “The Torah commands us to treat and cure the ill and to defeat disease wherever possible; to do this is to be the Creator’s partner in safeguarding the created,” they said. The council added: “The traditional Jewish perspective thus emphasizes that maximizing the potential to save and heal human life is an integral part of valuing human life.” However, reproductive cloning, a procedure that produces a child, raises deep concerns in Jewish thought because of questions about how a clone would affect familial relationships. Some Jewish scholars worry that cloning could make human beings commodities by making it possible to breed clones to have certain characteristics, such as physical strength or high intelligence. The Rabbinical Council has affirmed its opposition to reproductive cloning.
Not all Jews disapprove of reproductive cloning, however. Rabbi Michael Broyde expressed the view of some adherents to Reform Judaism when he argued in favor of reproductive cloning: “In sum, one is inclined to state that halacha (Jewish law and custom) views cloning as far less than the ideal way to reproduce people; however, when no other method is available it would appear that Jewish law accepts that having children through cloning is perhaps a mitzvah (blessing) in a number of circumstances and is morally neutral in a number of other circumstances.”
There is no similar diversity of opinion in the Roman Catholic Church, which is adamantly opposed to any form of human cloning and has worked to mobilize political opposition to it. The official position of the church is that life begins at conception. In the church’s view, creation of life and subsequent destruction of it for therapeutic or research purposes is equivalent to murder. In a speech to Vatican-based diplomats, Pope John Paul II expressed the official position of the Roman Catholic Church when he called the right to life “the most fundamental of human rights. Abortion, euthanasia, [and] human cloning . . . risk reducing the human person to a mere object. . . . When all moral criteria are removed, scientific research involving the sources of life becomes a denial of the being and the dignity of the person.” He added: “These techniques, insofar as they involve the manipulation and destruction of human embryos, are not morally acceptable, even when their proposed goal is good in itself.” Expressing a belief shared by adherents to most religions, he insisted that moral guidelines must always govern scientific inquiry: “What is technically possible is not for that reason alone morally admissible.”
Similarly, Orthodox Christian churches, including the Russian Orthodox Church and the Greek Orthodox Church, see no situation in which cloning human beings would be acceptable. They see human reproductive cloning as an attempt to create human beings in man’s image rather than God’s. According to Father Vsevolod Chaplin, archpriest of the Russian Orthodox Church, “If human clones are bred for the egotistical reason of giving one person a second, a third, a hundred or more lives, then a profound moral crisis arises. . . . What sort of person would it be, knowing that he, of all people, was somebody’s copy?” Reverend Demetrios Demopulos, parish priest of Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church and a holder of a PhD in genetics, writes, “As an Orthodox Christian, I speak out in opposition to any attempt to clone a human being because hu- mans are supposed to be created by acts of love between two people, not through the manipulation of cells in acts that are ultimately about self-love.”
Among Protestants there is a greater degree of disagreement. Clergy and congregants in conservative evangelical denominations tend to be closely aligned with the Roman Catholic Church on most social issues, and their views on cloning are no different. “Cloning is unethical and immoral and shows a complete disregard for the sanctity of human life,” says conservative Presbyterian minister Dr. D. James Kennedy. Mainstream denominations, such as Methodists, generally disapprove of all forms of cloning, as well. In more liberal Protestant denominations, however, there is less uniformity of thought.
The denomination considered by many to be the most liberal of Protestant churches, the United Church of Christ, formed a committee on genetics that expressed mild support for therapeutic cloning up to the fourteenth day after conception—the approximate period when the beginnings of the nervous system can be detected in a human embryo. According to church doctrine, the United Church of Christ does not oppose “research that produces and studies cloned human pre-embryos through the 14th day of fetal development, provided the research is well justified in terms of its objectives, that the research protocols show proper respect for the pre-embryos, and that they not be implanted.” The United Church of Christ General Synod passed a resolution in 2001 endorsing embryonic stem cell research that is conducted on embryos donated from fertility clinics. In 2001 Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly also issued a statement of support for embryonic stem cell research performed on embryos from in vitro fertilization clinics.
Despite their many differences with the West, most traditional Muslims also reject the idea of human cloning. Islam’s holy book, the Koran, states that the creation of human beings results from the joining of the reproductive seeds of a husband and wife. Reproductive cloning, which bypasses this union, is therefore considered unnatural and in opposition to Islam. In 1983 the Islamic Organization for Medical Sciences (IOMS) convened a seminar on the Islamic view of human reproduction and determined that human cloning was not permissible. According to IOMS,
Ordinary human cloning, in which the nucleus of a living somatic cell from an individual is placed into the cytoplasm of an egg devoid of its nucleus, is not to be permitted. . . . All Muslim countries are called upon to formulate the necessary legislation to prevent foreign research institutes, organisations and experts from directly or indirectly using Muslim countries for experimentation on human cloning or promoting it.
For some Muslims, however, therapeutic cloning may be permissible because of their belief that the embryo does not have moral standing until 120 days after conception. This traditional belief is also shared by many Jews, and was accepted by most Christians until scientific advances in the nineteenth century allowed the microscopic visualization of sperm, eggs, and fertilization, which revealed nascent life.
In the Hindu world, objections to human cloning arise from a different religious tenet. All cloning research violates a fundamental principle of Hinduism: doing no harm to other creatures. Animal cloning experiments, during which a large percentage of the clones die prematurely or have serious birth defects, obviously violate this principle. Human cloning, many experts say, would involve the same failure rate. As a result, most Hindus reject all cloning, including animal cloning.
The only one of the world’s great religions that appears to embrace all forms of human cloning, or at least is neutral about them, is Buddhism. In the Buddhist world view, the earth is a place of suffering in which sickness, old age, and death are unavoidable. The only way to be liberated from this world is through enlightenment, the state of full understanding of the nature of existence. The concept of individuality is alien to Buddhism, so Buddhist scholars generally believe that the way children are born is irrelevant. In fact, a few believe reproductive cloning might even be a method of reaching the state of enlightenment more quickly because the process could involve selectively breeding people with advanced moral qualities. Many Buddhists believe that therapeutic cloning may help to liberate people from the world of suffering. According to Professor Yong Moon of Korea’s Seoul National University, “Cloning is a different way of thinking about the recycling of life. It’s a Buddhist way of thinking.”
As the debate about human cloning intensifies, many are looking to religious leaders for guidance. Others oppose the influence of religion on cloning decisions, pointing out that the United States is officially a secular country. Yet in a nation that guarantees freedom of religion, most agree that diverse religious viewpoints can be helpful in informing many decisions in the public sphere, as long as those beliefs are part of a free and open discussion and are not ordained by the state.
The following viewpoints in At Issue: The Ethics of Human Cloning express some of the current thinking about the ethics of human cloning. From these arguments, it is clear that as the technology advances, passions on both sides of the debate will intensify. As scientists perfect cloning technology, there is no question that a variety of religious voices will increasingly shape the debate about human cloning.
