A new form of cloning has been developed that is easier to carry out than the technique used to create Dolly the sheep, raising fears that it may one day be used on human embryos to produce “designer” babies.
Scientists who used the procedure to create baby mice from the skin cells of adult animals have found it to be far more efficient than the Dolly technique, with fewer side effects, which makes it more acceptable for human use.
The mice were made by inserting skin cells of an adult animal into early embryos produced by in-vitro fertilisation (IVF). Some of the resulting offspring were partial clones but some were full clones ”“ just like Dolly.
[i]”It’s unethical and unsafe, but someone may be doing it today,”[/i]
“May”? I would say “is,” for the reason that due to modern culture’s politically correct misinterpretation of the First Amendment, biblically-based “ethics” are deemed to be an old-fashioned, topic inimicable to self-actualizing and therefore inappropriate in our public schools.
And the vrucial point is this, that our church is battling TEC, who does not deserve anything more than “Good-bye;don’t come back” while issues of this sort, which will determine the very nature of man, go unexamined in whatever light scripture can throw on them. How can we be so obtuse! So blind to the real world which is bearing down on all Christians like an uncontrolled freight train! Larry
Precisely, Larry! The challenge before us is not to fall into simplicities when it comes to the biogenetic research that is going on, for I do not believe it appropriate for faithful believers to be obscurantists or Luddites. However, cloning, animal-human hybrids, etc., raise all sorts of questions about the nature of humanity, and whether the research lab and the petri dish are the right places for human life to begin… and, anyhow, what is human life?
Leon Kass, who chaired the President’s Council on Bioethics, has written convincingly about parameters that need to be drawn, and these are best explained in his wonderful book, “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Dignity.” There are those in the Christian fold who are working on what it means to be human and what are the appropriate boundaries and approaches to research. Not only is their activity under-funded, most people don’t even know they are there — let alone listening to what they are trying to say as they address what is a rapidly moving target.
We wrestle over sexuality, but as I have said before and am probably destined to say again, this is merely a presenting symptom of a far deeper malaise: and that malaise focuses on what it truly means to be human made in the image of God.