Outlaw Cloning Immediately, SBC bioethicist tells panel

By Tom Strode

WASHINGTON (BP)--The cloning of human beings, including embryos,
should be outlawed immediately, a Southern Baptist bioethicist
said in testimony submitted to a congressional panel.

Ben Mitchell, consultant on biomedical and life issues for the
Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said in
written testimony for a House of Representatives subcommittee
human cloning is not only objectionable morally and
scientifically, but it "would upset traditional family patterns"
and raise questions society is ill-prepared to address.

Mitchell's testimony was submitted for a March 28 hearing at
which both proponents and foes of human cloning testified. The
hearing was before the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee
of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Most of the reasons given for cloning a human being would be
immoral, because a clone would have to be considered a human
person, Mitchell said.

"From a Christian perspective, a cloned human being would be as
much a person as any other human being," he said. "She would be
an embodied soul and would be an imager of God. As an imager of
God, human clones would possess the same dignity and divinely
bestowed moral worth as any other member of our species."

As a person, a clone should be treated with the same dignity
bestowed on a human being conceived through normal reproduction,
said Mitchell, who also is associate professor of bioethics and
contemporary culture at Trinity International University in
suburban Chicago.

"Thus, human clones would not be suitable 'organ farms' for those
needing transplantable organs," he said. "Human clones would not
be acceptable 'substitutes' for children who died leaving their
parents grief-stricken. Human clones, likewise, would be
ethically unacceptable candidates as 'icons' in some kind of
narcissistic cult of self-worship."

Cloning experimentation on human embryos "is wrong on the face of
it," Mitchell wrote. Before the first mammal, the sheep Dolly,
was successfully cloned, 276 embryos "were sacrificed on the
altar of biotechnology," he said. "While this might be an
acceptable practice when cloning sheep (providing the sheep were
not abused in the lab), such experimentation would be
unconscionable when applied to human embryos."

Cloning research on animals has shown cloning human beings would
result not only in "untold loss of life" but "grotesque
consequences in the lives of those who survived," he said.
Developmental and genetic abnormalities are common in animal
clones, Mitchell said, citing researchers.

Some homosexuals have endorsed human cloning as a way to produce
families without restrictions, Mitchell said. Human cloning also
raises questions about the purpose of reproduction, he said.

From a biblical viewpoint, reproduction is a "covenant
responsibility" granted by God, Mitchell said.

Children "are to be viewed as a divine gift, not a narcissistic
means of self-definition," he said. "[T]he time is long overdue
for us to re-examine and recommit ourselves as a culture to
fulfill our obligations to our children as treasured members of
the familial covenant -- not commodities to be used for our
desired ends."

Other concerns raised by human cloning, he said, include:

-- "To what extent children have a right to expect to have a
mother and father.

-- "How do we combat the inherent eugenics motivations behind
human cloning?

-- "Would persons with disease genes be cloned? Would the
near-sighted, far-sighted or deaf be cloned? Would the obese or
frail be cloned?"

Mitchell acknowledged a human being might be cloned soon. "The
near inevitability of cloning does not, however, make its
imminence more welcome," he said. "We are exquisitely
ill-equipped morally to deal with the reality of a human clone in
our midst."

Mitchell criticized the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, a
presidentially appointed panel, for failing to condemn the
cloning of human embryos when it said it was morally unacceptable
to "attempt to create a child" through cloning. It "seems clear
that NBAC and President Clinton left the gate wide open for
privately funded embryo research, including embryo cloning. We
are now paying for their moral negligence," he said.

He would support cloning human genes for research, as well as
human cells and organs, "as long as the means of getting there
does not treat humans subhumanly," Mitchell said.

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