Human cloning

Man "shall never create a life"

Human cloning

"There is only one God, the Lord high God in Heaven. No man is God, even though he places himself up as God now, even trying to create life, and even trying to restore life to the dead. He shall never restore life to the dead. He shall never create a life. What he shall create is a monster, a soulless being."
- Our Lady, June 18, 1982

"Scientists must stop at once their pryings, their experimentation into a realm that has brought them in league and contact with the very forces of hell, Lucifer and his agents."
- Our Lady, August 19, 1978

In a January 30th article from the BBC news, Professor Panos Zavos says that the world must "come to grips with cloning." He is spokesman for a group that has plans to clone a human being by the year 2003. The article reads:

A private consortium of scientists plans to clone a human being within the next two years... It says the technology will resemble that used to clone animals, and will be made widely available. (Cloned human planned 'by 2003,' January 30, 2001)

The first major implications of cloning became apparent in February of 1997, which marked the world's first public knowledge of the cloned sheep, Dolly. Ian Wilmut, a scientist at a tiny biotechnology company in Edinburgh, Scotland announced the cloning of the first sheep born in July 1996.[1] Wilmut's scientific accomplishment broke upon the world's media as one of the most interesting yet alarming events to hit the news in years, alarming in the real possibility that this new-found technology will inevitably lead to experimentation in the field of human clones.

The topic of cloning has existed for decades. Ever since the determination of the structure of DNA by Francis Crick and James Watson in 1953, the topic has been discussed widely, in scientific and informal debate, in movies, and in books, such as Aldous Huxley's Brave New World in which humans were cloned to perform specific tasks in society. Imagination has not been lacking, only the technology. Until now. In fact, there has been unconfirmed reports that in South Korea's Kyunghee University Hospital scientists have already cloned the first human embryo, which was subsequently destroyed.[2] Although denied by many to be only a hoax, it nevertheless brings home the immediacy of this new and very real bioethical issue.

One of the South Korean scientists responsible for this alleged first human clone is Dr. Kin Seung Bo. In an interview with the BBC, Dr. Bo was asked when the first human clone would be born. His reply: "Sooner than you think." [3]

Until recently, cloning people was the stuff of late-night "Twilight Zone" episodes, but the mice have changed all that.
For 45 years, scientists have been cloning animals-mice, sheep and calves-creating genetic replicas without the natural reproductive process.
Last December, scientists in South Korea announced that they had successfully cloned a human cell for the first time. A human cell taken from an infertile woman was cloned to create a four-cell embryo, which conceivably could have grown into a genetic adult replica of the woman. The scientists claimed they stopped short of implanting the embryo for ethical reasons.[4]

EUGENICS
To understand more fully the ideological drive behind the cloning movement, one must first be familiar with eugenics, a word coined by Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin. An excellent summary of eugenics and its history is summed up in an article entitled "Introduction to Eugenics" by John Cavanaugh-O'Keefe.[5] Eugenics is the study of methods to improve the human race by controlling reproduction. Galton believed that the proper evolution of the human race was impeded by philanthropic outreach to the poor when such efforts encouraged them to bear more children. Charity upset the mechanism of natural selection. Therefore, what the human race needed was a kind of artificial selection: eugenics.

In 1970, I.I. Gottesman, a director of the American Eugenics Society, stated: "The essence of evolution is natural selection; the essence of eugenics is the replacement of 'natural' selection by conscious, premeditated, or artificial selection in the hope of speeding up the evolution of 'desirable' characteristics and the elimination of undesirable ones."

Shortly after the turn of the century, the American Journal of Eugenics advertized itself by noting that it was "formerly known as Lucifer the Light Bearer." Eugenics has certainly carried with it an ideological outlook. Galton suggested that it should function as a religion, a sentiment echoed by George Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell and others. Julian Huxley, the first Director-General of UNESCO stated:

The word religion is often used restrictively to mean belief in gods; but I am not using it in this sense... I am using it in a broader sense, to denote an overall relation between man and his destiny, and one involving his deepest feelings, including his sense of what is sacred. In this broad sense, evolutionary humanism, it seems to me, is capable of becoming the germ of a new religion, not necessarily supplanting existing religions but supplementing them.

The work of eugenicists includes promoting birth control, restricting immigration, sterilizing the handicapped, promoting euthanasia, and seeking ways to increase the number of genetically well-endowed individuals. Hitler is perhaps the most notorious historical figure to have embraced eugenics, in his quest to establish the "Master Race." Yet eugenicists outside of Germany failed to criticize Hitler's actions. In fact, the U.S. Birth Control Review publication praised the effectiveness of the Germans. The eugenics movement did not die with Hitler, but rather continued to thrive without reform. Advances in the field of genetics and the promotion of birth control on a wide scale were great victories for the eugenics movement. Beginning in the 1960s, a few members of the Eugenics Society built and controlled almost the entire private abortion industry.

In an editorial from Human Life International:

Human cloning has nothing to do with privacy or autonomy or women's rights. To understand the [cloning] debate, you have to find and understand some other power base in Washington, some other movement some other ideology. There is a powerful force in the nation dealing with issues of human reproduction, other than pro-lifers and feminists.
There is a name for the people who want to proceed with human cloning. They are eugenicists. Most people have never heard of eugenics, and the few who do recall the technical name for Hitler's race ideas generally believe that his destructive proposals died in the rubble of Berlin. But for over a century, the eugenics movement has worked hard to improve the human race, by social control of reproduction, and no part of their program has ended. [6]

Many scientists have long since stepped over the moral barrier, ignoring the fact that just because something is scientifically possible, doesn't mean it is morally permissible.

References:

1. Christopher Mario, "A Spark of Science, a Storm of Controversy," U.S. 1 Newspaper, March 5, 1997. Princeton University.
2. "What If They Cloned a Man and Nobody Cared?" U.S. News & World Report, January 4, 1999, p. 48.
3. BBC News, "Human Clone Claim in Doubt," February 9, 1999.
4. "Cloning Moratorium ends in '02; What Then?" Patrick Johnston, Sacramento Business Journal, February 2, 1999.
5. EWTN webpage, http://www.ewtn.
6. "Cloning Debate: Glimpse of the Future," Human Life International website (www.hli.org).

"You wander about now in your earth, man of science, seeking to reach the gates of the eternal Kingdom. Man of science, in his arrogance, seeking to create life. I say unto you: no man shall take the power of creation into his hands, for he will destroy himself."
-Jesus, February 1, 1977

Note: God is the sole Creator of the immortal human soul, and uses the man and woman as ministers, as cooperators in His divine plan. The philosophical and theological implications of conception occurring outside of the natural law have not been addressed by most theologians. A noteworthy exception is the Jesuit theologian, Fr. James Royce, S.J.: "The short-lived embryos produced in the laboratory by artificially fecundating a human ovum with a human sperm could conceivably have a human soul, but not in our present understanding of the working of Divine Providence. They are probably animated by some infrahuman animal form." - James E. Royce, S.J., Man and His Nature

"Cloning risks being the tragic parody of God's omnipotence." (Pontifical Academy for Life, "Reflections on Human Cloning", 1997)

Directives from Heaven:

D55 - Test-Tube Babies PDF
D195 - Cloning PDF

External Links:

Human cloning (Pontifical Academy of Life, Reflections on Human Cloning)