Humans are meant to be created in love, and any action which undermines the creative partnership between parents and God is inconsistent with the dignity of human life, writes Father Kevin Doran.
Until relatively recently, human cloning belonged to the realm of science fiction. Some years ago I watched a film in which Hitler was supposed to have been cloned before he died in his bunker in Berlin. The assumption was that the clones would not just look like Hitler, but that they might also behave like him. The film followed the life stories of all the clones until they were eventually tracked down and destroyed, for the "good of humanity".
Then came Dolly the sheep, the first animal to be successfully cloned. All of a sudden science fiction had become scientific fact. The process of cloning is relatively simple in theory. Every animal cell has a nucleus, a central core which contains the genetic information of the cell. Cloning involves removing the nucleus from an ovum, and replacing it with the nucleus from another cell. This process triggers the development of a new embryo, which is a genetic copy of the animal from whom the replacement cell-nucleus has been taken.
In the past two years a number of scientists have claimed to be on the verge of successfully cloning a human embryo. From a practical point of view this should not be any more difficult than cloning a sheep. The problem is that some scientists tend to assume that just because something is possible it must be a good thing to do. Medical and legal organisations have expressed serious concern about human cloning. Three times in the past five years it has been condemned by the European Parliament.
Before Dolly could be born, 277 sheep embryos were produced and discarded. It is one thing to destroy that many sheep embryos so that one could be born; it would be unacceptable to destroy or discard large numbers of human embryos simply to bring one cloned human being to birth. Cloning, like many other forms of artificial reproduction, seems destined to destroy more life than it produces.
There have been health complications with animal cloning. One is the problem of premature ageing. The cloned animal is the same genetic age as the one from which it was cloned. This would suggest that a cloned child would probably have a much shorter lifespan than a child born in the normal way.
Human individuals are meant to be created in love, through a process in which parents are intimately involved as procreators with God. Any action or process which undermines this creative partnership is inconsistent with the dignity of human life. Cloning removes life-giving from the realm of procreation and turns it into a laboratory process. It leaves the human embryo open to manipulation and quality control, which are elements of all laboratory processes.
Cloning makes it possible to select the precise genetic make-up of a child. The cell-nucleus which is used in cloning can come from any human being, man or woman, including the woman herself whose ovum is used. The meaning of parenthood is radically transformed. Nature clearly intended that children should have two parents, a man and a woman, who together would assure the genetic and emotional balance as well as the material and spiritual well-being of their child.
There is always some risk that parents will be over-possessive of their children. But with cloning the child is literally formed "in the image" of the adult. The very possibility of selection includes the temptation to control and to manipulate. It is likely that people who seek to have a child who is a copy of themselves will not stop at the level of physical resemblance. The emotional identity of the child is also put at risk, as indeed is her freedom to be who she is called to be as a unique human being. Some scientists distinguish between reproductive cloning (for the purposes of having a child) and therapeutic cloning (for the purposes of medical research). They argue that if human embryos could be cloned, it would be possible to use cells from these embryos (known as stem cells) for the treatment of conditions such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.
In the first place, the distinction between reproductive and therapeutic cloning is only a fudge. All cloning is reproductive, because it produces living embryos. If stem cells were to be extracted from human embryos, the embryos themselves would be destroyed.
It is never morally justifiable to deliberately destroy one human life in order to save another. To do so would undermine the dignity of every human being because it implies that a human being (any human being) can be used as a means to an end.
Apart from the issue of respect for the life of the embryo, the use of stem cells taken from embryos has not proved to be good medicine. In cases where it has been tried, using embryos left over after IVF, there have been serious complications. Stem cells injected into the brain have resulted in the growth of bone or hair instead of the desired brain tissue. This is because embryonic stem cells are at such an early stage in development that they are "undifferentiated". By contrast, stem cells taken from human bone marrow have been used successfully. The technology for the harvesting and use of bone marrow is well developed, and has been used for over 20 years in the treatment of leukaemia.
In short, the use of human embryos as a source of stem cells is not only immoral - it is also bad medicine.
The most recent claim to have developed a human clone comes from a group called the Raelians. According to themselves, the Raelians are not a religious sect; they don't believe in a God. They seem to be some kind of cult, focused around one individual called Rael.
There is a tradition in modern philosophy which would suggest that the human mind is all powerful, and that we humans can literally take the place of God. Insofar as they worship anything, the Raelians would appear to worship the human capacity to control everything through science.
Cults are frequently associated with the emotional and economic manipulation of their members. Some cults have even persuaded their members to participate in mass suicides.
It is not surprising that a cult-like group should be involved in cloning. After all, cloning is the ultimate form of manipulation. It controls and determines those whom it produces from the first moment of their existence. The real worry is not whether cloning is possible, but rather the mentality that leads people to even try to make it happen.
Father Kevin Doran is secretary of the Irish Catholic Bishops' Committee for Bioethics (www.healthcare-ethics.ie) and teaches at the Milltown Institute