| Grey and Gray |
16 February 2004
|
Cloning Humans Forces New Ethical Thinking
A US and South Korean team of researchers working out of Seoul, South Korea, have managed to clone a human embryo and extract stem cells from it. The paper was published in Science last week, although the work commenced some time ago. While the process was intricate, delicate and difficult, it was nothing compared to resolving the ethical issues such technology poses.
The "when does life begin" questions are the easiest to deal with, or more accurately, the least well-nigh impossible to settle. Cloning does not appear to create a problem as such for most who believe that life begins at conception, or an any stage thereafter. No, the real sticky questions arise when one asks to what end did the scientist clone the embryo.
As a way of making a new human being for those incapable of producing offspring in more traditional ways, cloning is not that far removed ethically from in vitro fertilization. Test-tube babies are largely viewed as a good thing, an option to be kept open. Yet there remain legitimate questions about unused embryos and their fate.
In cases where the embryo will be used for harvesting stem cells, the life-at-conception crowd have genuine problems if the harvesting means the embryo is damaged or destroyed. The deliberate creation of a human life to serve as a source for parts to save other humans is not a particularly attractive concept. And then, the question reverts to the issue of when a life begins -- which has been the source of all the heat and the absence of light in the abortion debate.
An outright ban is the favored choice of some, and while it might be nice to put the genie back in the bottle, it does prevent a good deal of possibly quite legitimate research. Moreover, such a ban won't apply outside of national borders, and an international treaty will take years (during which time, cloned humans will be born and grow to young adulthood).
There are no good answers at the moment, and the questions are still vague. Yet, in must be remembered that technology is a morally neutral thing. A knife in the hands of a madman can kill, in the hands of a surgeon it can give life. Humans are the moral agents in this equation, and whatever resolution arises, it will have to be about human behavior, and not about the technology.
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