Have you all been keeping up on the cloning of human beings controversy going on right now? This Italian doctor claims that he will have embryos to implant within 30-60 days and that it's a good thing for people who can't have children of their own. He will go ahead and do it no matter what the Italian government or the scientific community tells him. Why couldn't these people adopt?

Auuugggh, I find it horrific on so many levels and there are way too many ethical problems to even begin a good job at sorting them out. What do you think?

-- Doreen (animalwaitress@yahoo.com), August 09, 2001

Answers

I'm with you, Doreen. They have gone way over the line with this! It is morally repugnant and, as you said, horrific on so many levels and too many ethical problems. I would think they would do better trying to figure out the problems we already have in this world (the answer is simple - JESUS).

-- Deena in GA (dsmj55@aol.com), August 09, 2001.

Well, at this juncture in time it doesn't appear that I'll need to either adopt any children or have myself or my wife cloned so this is somewhat an academic question. It's my understanding though that adopting a child is anything but simple or easy and even if it was it's not the same as having a child who is your own blood kin (or genetic relation as we'd say in the twenty first century now).

Cloning, when it becomes mature enough to achieve a good degree of reliability, is just a technology. It is no more evil nor good than your pocketknife. Naturally, it can be used for evil purposes and just as naturally it can be used for good purposes. It's all up to the intent of the person doing the cloning and those who are backing them. I can certainly see how it might be used for purposes that I would be against but I can also see how it might be used to grow replacement organs rather than the "hope for the best" system that we have now of waiting for a matching donor organ to come along before the recipient dies. So long as they're not growing a complete functioning human being to break up for parts I'd think it was a real boon.

At the heart of it, technology is neither good nor evil, it just is. It becomes good or evil in the hands of a particular person or group of persons using it for some particular purpose.

={(Oak)-

-- Live Oak (oneliveoak@yahoo.com), August 09, 2001.

Doreen, I am with you,I find cloneing to be bad. I think according to the bible, there are just one of us.So now they want to make two of us, will God give the second one a soul? something is very wrong with all this. Irene

-- Irene texas (tkorsborn@cs.com), August 09, 2001.

Doreen, I agree with you. It is playing GOD and we will pay, I can assure you. Why in the world would anyone want a "cloned" baby now when millions are being killed by abortion. I'm really sad for the state this world has come to. Sounds like another "Hitler" to me trying to have the "perfect" race. Apparently they don't know only God is perfect.

-- Barb (bjconthefarm@yahoo.com), August 09, 2001.

I don't care for the idea of human cloning, mainly because of the lack of respect for human life that is bound to go along with it. What will they do with the cloned babies that look fine but then die suddenly or have something seriously srong with them? It is also a VERY short step from clones to genetically designed humans. I don't fear cloning as a mass event(i.e. a cloned master race and sexual reproduction becoming archaic), simply because of the enormous cost involved, also it would be necessary to find enough women willing to carry the cloned embryos. They are having so much trouble with cloning animals, I don't know why they won't work out the particularson that first before moving on to humans. Then there's the question of whether or not we should propagate individuals that are not capable of reproducing normally? For example, it may be that one parent is carrying a letal gene that causes the embryos to die, they might figure out a way to circumvent that but would it really be a good idea? Considering the astronomical cost of cloning, I can't believe that it could ever be cheaper than adopting.
As for whether or not cloning is evil and mysterious in and of itself, I don't think it is. If you have ever rooted an african violet leaf or planted comfrey, strawberries, or divided iris or daylilies, you have participated in cloning. Identical twins are clones that developed naturally, they each have a soul and their own unique and individual personality. Cloning people artificially, with a possible agenda, is what I have a problem with.

-- Rebekah (daniel@itss.net), August 09, 2001.

Cloning will come. Makes no difference what we think, whether we agree or not--it will be. The "image" talked about in Revelation is, imho, a clone of the anti-christ. I think the anti-christ is alive and well right now. I also thing the rapture is at hand. In 3 years after the rapture, the "image" will be present. Some wonder how this can be. If ya'll recall, the sheep that was cloned a few short years ago suprised them all. She AGED more quickly than the orginal!!! In 3 or 4 years a clone could possibly be aged to equal a 30 year old???

So---I'm not gonna get upset because many diverse and ungodly things will happen before Jesus Christ comes for His church. This is just one of those things. OH, btw, I am against cloning. ole hoot. Matt.24;44

-- hoot gibson (hoot@pcinetwork.com), August 09, 2001.

For those of you interested in the topic, I see from the MSNBC home page that the President is scheduled to announce this evening that there will be partial Federal funding for stem cell research. For anyone wishing to send an e-mail to the White House regarding this abmonination the address is as follows: president@whitehouse.gov

-- Stef (sbrogers@csonline.net), August 09, 2001.

Some technology is MORE than technology alone. Look at the atom bomb. Now we can blow ourselves up how many times over? What did Einstein say after the experiments were done? "Today physics has known sin." errr, maybe science in place of physics, but anyway, there is nothing mundane about cloning. With plants, it is part of the propagation process and I don't believe there is nearly the emotional aspect assigned to animals and certainly not to humans. Fer cryin' out loud, how can anyone just think it's "no big deal"???? It is flat out atrocious! This is very dangerous. It opens legal, moral and ethical morasses that we can't even begin to comprehend.

What if you want slaves of a particular stature....clone them! How bout the greatest football team? ...clone them! How about an army of brutish, non thinking look like humans, with the humanity part removed? Fetal alcohol syndrome to the nth degree would make great little state warriors. I DO of course realize that there is a learning curve involoved, but the point is, it completely flies in the face of reason. Caste systems, anyone? Oh no, the love crossed teenaged clone vs. norm. I mean, please. Do clones have the right to reproduce themselves? Anyone egotistical enough to insist on a genetic replica of themselves wouuld want genetic replica grand clones, no? Are they responsible for their actions? What do they call their gestational human? Mom-ME? What about the father? You want to talk about "human resource". What about cloning from people who don't even know they were being cloned from? You leave a bit of yourself everywhere you go. If they aged at twice the speed like sheepo do, they could catch up to your physical age fairly quickly and then how do you prove you are who you are and this other is an imposter? Ugh. This doesn't even scratch the surface of the religious aspects, or the legal potentialities here. It is sheer insanity.

Unfortunately, Hoot is right that it will happen, whether we like it or not. As to the anti-Christ thing, I heard about a group that intends to clone Christ in Jerusalem....using the shroud for the dna. If they do that, I shudder to think of the affront that would be to God. Yes, I know the shroud is suspect, but nonetheless, that was their plan.

Whacky.Foolish. Wrong.

Don't ask me what I really think.....;}

-- Doreen (bisquit@here.com), August 09, 2001.

When you "clone" plants, be they iris or African violets, or whatever, it isn't murder. If you use stem cells from embryo humans, you have to kill the embryo, which is murder, since life begins at conception. Am I in favor of cloning humans (or animals)? No, no, a thousand times NO!!

-- ruth in se Illinois (bobtravous@email.com), August 14, 2001.

First off the embryo's that aren't used by couples are rinsed down the sink, so why at this junction would folks now care if they wanted to use them for research or not? A very good point made by a friend of mine was that "it is only now that folks find out we wash these embryos down the sink do they care about them, what they didn't know before didn't hurt them." My sister who has worked in special education all her life recently commented that once they start cloning her job will be safe forever. It will be decades before cloning is going to reliably produce viable children, and until then, cloning isn't going to be the problem it will be the decisions of what these doctors are going to do with the mistakes. Certainly they won't let them live, since it will show us very quickly that this is Frankenstein science. So how many backroom murders of infants will happen, abortions when amnio results show deformaties, all done in secret because once we know, we will once again care. I do agree with stem cell research, which is really a byproduct of invetro- fertilization, I do not agree with cloning, because at this point it is not science. Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), August 15, 2001.

Cloning could help many people acording to Gregorgy Stock, a bioethicist, "the potential medical benefits of genetic engineering are too great for us to let nebulous fears of the future drive policy." I would like to see cloning pass. who knoow it might just save YOUR life. Andy

-- Andy Shang (goodday232003@yahoo.com), April 03, 2003.