Cloning and Life Issues - A Biblical Perspective

For most Christians life issues are very important. They are conscious that the scriptures implore us to "choose life." (Deut. 30:19) They know that David, in Psalm 139:13-16, talks about how God "wove me in my mother's womb." They are very aware of the Lord's words to Jeremiah: "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, And before you were born I consecrated you;" (1:5). But all of these verses relate to a person being conceived and developed in the traditional way in the womb of a mother. Today there is talk of life being produced in another way - by cloning. How are Christians to respond and what should they do about this issue?

The main question that arises for most Christians in the cloning debate is whether or not cloning produces a human life. There is much talk in political circles about "reproductive" cloning and "therapeutic" cloning. Most members of Congress, along with most Americans, oppose cloning that would result in the live birth of a human baby. However, there is much division in thinking about the so-called "therapeutic" or "research" cloning.

To many people the talk about cloning seems like science fiction, a lot of academicians sitting around debating "what if?" types of questions. But it is not fiction at all. We live in a day when science and medicine have crossed frontiers of which earlier generations never dreamed.

Most people struggle with the idea of a life being created without the union of a male sperm and female egg. In that process both the male and female bring one half of the chromosomes that are needed to make life possible. Through that union the resulting embryo has all that is needed for life. In cloning this one step is bypassed. An egg is taken from a female donor and the nucleus (containing half the chromosomes needed) is removed and replaced by a nucleus from a mature human cell (containing all the chromosomes). A chemical or electrical impulse is then used to stimulate the egg to begin the growth process. The question is whether both these processes bring about the same end. I believe that they do.

President Bush has expressed his opposition to any type of cloning, and has established a President's Council on Bioethics to consider the ethical, moral and legal issues involved. The chairman of this council is Dr. Leon Kass, M.D., who serves as the Addie Clark Harding Professor, College and the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, and Hertog Fellow, American Enterprise Institute. He is a nationally renowned bioethicist, and has written extensively on biology and human affairs. Dr. Kass has stated:

First of all, the zygote and early embryonic stages are clearly alive. They metabolize, respire, and respond to changes in the environment; they grow and divide. Second, though not yet organized into distinctive parts or organs, the blastocyst is an organic whole, self-developing, genetically unique and distinct from the egg and sperm whose union marked the beginning of its career as a discrete, unfolding being . . . I must acknowledge that the human blastocyst is (1) human in origin and (2) potentially a mature human being, if all goes well. This, too, is beyond dispute . . . the human blastocyst, even the human blastocyst in vitro, is not humanly nothing; it possesses a power to become what everyone will agree is a human being." (1)

Dr. John Gearhart of Johns Hopkins University is one of the scientists who discovered stem cells. While testifying before the President's Council on Bioethics in favor of "therapeutic" cloning, he said:

I know that you are grappling with this [question of whether a cloned embryo created in the lab is the same thing as an embryo produced by egg and sperm, and whether we should call it an "embryo"], . . . anything that you construct at this point in time that has the properties of those structures to me is an embryo, and we should not be changing vocabulary at this point in time. It doesn't change some of the ethical issues involved." (2)

Even though Dr. Gearhart favors cloning for research, he clearly believes that a human embryo is formed through the cloning process. It is intellectually troubling that a scientist of Dr. Gearhart's stature could agree that a human embryo has been developed, while at the same time support the destruction of that embryo for research. He, at least, is honest when many in his camp want to change terminology in an attempt to sidestep the moral issues this creates. Others call it "somatic cell transfer," "regenerative medicine," and so forth attempting to avoid any reference to human life.

Since 1996, the United States Congress has defined the early human embryo outside the womb as an "organism . . . that is derived by fertilization, parthenogenesis, cloning, or any other means from one or more human gametes or human diploid cells." (3) Notice that Congress specifically includes the cloned human organism under its definition of an embryo.

In 1997 the National Bioethics Advisory Commission issued a report entitled, Cloning Human Beings, and stated:

The commission began its discussions fully recognizing that any effort in humans to transfer a somatic cell nucleus into an enucleated egg [this is the process described at the beginning of this article] involves the creation of an embryo, with the apparent potential to be implanted in utero and developed to term."

As already noted, most people believe that implanting a cloned embryo into a uterus for full development is wrong. Why then is there seemingly the acceptance by many of these same people of "therapeutic" cloning?

Dr. Amy Coxon, biologist with the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of Health, has written:

There is absolutely no difference in the scientific techniques used to accomplish - or the embryonic human beings produced - via therapeutic cloning or the cloning of a human being for other purposes . . . In the process of 'therapeutic' cloning, the transfer of diploid DNA from a somatic cell into an enucleated egg results in the egg cell being made diploid (becoming an embryo) and the initiation of the development of a human being." (4)

Dr. Ben Mitchell, Associate Professor of Bioethics and Contemporary Culture, Trinity International University, Deerfield, IL, has also written:

Not only do I think we have to agree that a human clone is a human person, but I think it would be dangerous not to think this would be the case . . . There is no good reason biologically to assume that a human clone would be any less human than a person conceived through normal reproduction." (5)

When human life has begun, even in the case of cloning, there is a necessity that it be respected. Dr. Glen Scorgie, professor of theology at Bethel Seminary, San Diego, CA, and Dr. Claire Evens Jones, assistant professor of neuropharmacology at the Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA have written:

Understanding God's design for humanity is] "premised on humanity's value. True humanness builds on a recognition of the sanctity, the sacredness, of human life in all its forms and stages." (6)

Robert George, J.D., the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University, ties the various stages of life together in a clear manner when he writes:

The being that is now you or me is the same being that was once an adolescent, and before that a toddler, and before that an infant, and before that a fetus, and before that an embryo. To have destroyed the being that is you or me at any of these stages would have been to destroy you or me." (7)

The major ethical issue relating to "therapeutic" cloning is that it is creating a human life with the only purpose of destroying it for research. No matter how much good might come out of this process, it is not justifiable. Leon Kass has summed up the ethical issues as being the same either in cloning or sexual reproduction as far as research is concerned:

What, then should we do? We should declare that human cloning is unethical in itself and dangerous in its likely consequences. In so doing, we shall have the backing of the overwhelming majority of our fellow Americans, and of the human race, and (I believe) of most practicing scientists . . . I have serious reservations about creating human embryos for the sole purpose of experimentation. There is something deeply repugnant and fundamentally transgressive about such a utilitarian treatment of prospective human life. This total, shameless exploitation is worse, in my opinion, than the 'mere' destruction of nascent life." (8)

In his speech calling for a ban on all cloning, President Bush declared that "Human cloning is deeply troubling to me and to most Americans. Life is a creation, not a commodity." Dr. Kass is clear that to simply create life in order to experiment on it is unacceptable. In fact, he sees no difference in doing research on cloned or sexually produced embryos:

But I see no added objections, as a matter of principle, to creating and using cloned early embryos for research purposes, beyond the objections that I might raise to doing so with embryos produced sexually." (9)

Dr. David Stevens, M.D., Director of the Christian Medical Association, gives several reasons why he believes that "therapeutic" cloning is wrong and should be opposed:

• " It is immoral, because it always kills. So-called "therapeutic" or "research" cloning manufactures human beings in order to obtain stem cells, a process that kills the human embryo.
  
  
• " Second, human cloning is wrong because it is unnecessary. Embryonic stem cell research on animals has been going on for years and has yet to show any medical benefit. By contrast, adult stem cells are being used to treat diseases today. (10)
  

It should be obvious that cloning, like sexual reproduction, creates a human embryo which is defined as "life." The Brownback bill (S. 1899) is the only piece of legislation that prohibits cloning. The Feinstein bill (S. 1758) and the Harkin/Specter bill (S. 1893) really only ban the transfer of an already-cloned human embryo into a uterus (or, in the case of S. 1893, into a "substitute" for a uterus). It is important that those who are pro-life contact their senators and encourage them to stand for life by supporting the Brownback bill (S. 1899), which will ban all human cloning.

Bill Haynes
Senior Policy Analyst for
Cultural & Worldview Studies

1. Dr. Leon Kass, The Meaning of Life - in the Laboratory
2. Testimony before the President's Council on Bioethics, April 25, 2002, from official transcript.
3. Sec. 510 (b) of P.L. 107-116 (Labor/HHS/Education appropriations act for FY 2002)
4. Dr. Amy Coxon, Ph.D., Therapeutic Cloning: An Oxymoron, The Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity
5. Dr. Ben Mitchell, Ph.D., The Ethics of Human Cloning
6. Glen Scorgie & Claire Evens Jones, "Human Life is Not Sheep: An Ethical Perspective On Cloning" in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, December 1997
7. "Stem Cell Research: A Debate; Don't Destroy Human Life" in the Wall Street Journal, July 30, 2001
8. Dr. Leon Kass, The Wisdom of Repugnance
9. ibid.
10. Notes from "A Christian Vision for the Biotech Century" conference, sponsored by the Wilberforce Forum, Washington, D.C., February 22, 2002.