I just got an unsolicited, automated phone call from an organization fighting against stem cell research. NoHumanCloning.org [1] is dedicated to raising fears and resisting biological research that furthers naturalistic understanding of who we are and how to artificially repair our ailments.
The current battle is to prevent this type of research from being constitutionally legalized in Missouri, and consequently to get out conservative voters this November 7th in our 58%-ish “red” state.
Let’s ignore the issue of whether a blob of a dozen cells is a person or not. I just don’t understand the fear of cloning. In the movies, a human clone is identical to the original, down to the scars and all the experiences of growing up. Sometimes it is evil. It’s silly. These clones are more like the original than an identical twin shackled to our protagonist for life would ever be.
If a real-life human clone were to be gestated, reared, and educated, it would be considerably more different from the original than would an identical twin, simply because every aspect of its/his/her growth from conception onward would be different. Nuclear genes can only do so much. During gestation, the genes of the egg mother (mitochondia), the genes of the host mother, the diet of the host mother, the activities of the host mother, and the age of the host mother significantly determine how the blastocyst, embryo, and fetus develop. These factors affect size, symmetry, and root personality (and other traits, but these are easy to demonstrate).
Does a clone have a soul? To me, this is a null question. But, for those who believe in divine and eternal souls: Given a God who delivers souls to each of a set of twinned (or more) babies from the same egg, I’d bet that he’d give a soul to any gestated child, whether the egg nucleus is genetically from just-met haploids, or from a skin cell.
Sociologically speaking, why would anyone besides a raving narcissist want to do this expensive, complex, and unlikely procedure? In practice, the new child would simply exhibit a family resemblance to the original donor.
The current best hope for stem cell technology involving a cloned blastocyst is to grow replacement organs in vitro. Replacement pancreatic tissue for a diabetic, a lung lobe for a non-repentant smoker, bone marrow for leukemics, and so on.
It is Frankensteinian in concept, as are vaccines, organ transplants, and other technologies that were vocally fought in their early days, and now are accepted. Keep in mind that the phrase “as God intended” is always synonymous with “what we’re used to”.
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