I’ve been reading a lot about human cloning lately. "Designer Medicine," I like to call it. So how does this whole thing with human cloning supposedly help people? Well, this what they say: you give a clinician a few of your skin cells, then he extracts your DNA, then he injects it into a woman’s egg; (the nucleus has been removed) he puts that into a Petri dish, then he sends a little electric charge to the tiny cell, and viola! that little egg (that has your DNA) starts multiplying and dividing, and in less than four weeks, you've got your own personal set of stem cells out of which your doctor can develop a medical treatment designed just for you. Sounds kind of appealing, doesn't it?
It also sounds pretty far out there; like real science fiction! Well, not long ago, a private California clinic went through same scenario… in fact it was the scientist in that clinic who provided his own skin cells and extracted his own DNA and went through the whole process. The result? He produced a human clone of himself for the purposes of extracting its stem cells – his own stem cells. I read in the newspaper how the scientist was able to look through a microscope at his own little embryo. He was, in fact, looking at an image of himself before he was born – isn’t that strange, isn’t that science fictionish? In the newspaper article, the scientist described it as, and this is his words, “Going back into time, like visiting the place where he began.”
Well, friends, we knew it would come down to this sooner or later. The genie has been let out of the bottle. The science has now escaped – is it a good genie or a bad genie? Well, I think it’s pretty bad – because here we’ve got a great example of man making man in man’s image. Talk about a slap-in-the-face of God the Creator! No longer is man made in God's image, no, cloning has made it possible to make man in man’s image.
It’s a hot topic of debate right now among ethicists and theologians. As you’d expect, in this example of cloning, ethical and legal guidelines are way behind the science. And, oh, do we need ethical boundaries, we really do! And what will help, is that you… you and me and all of us stay informed on this issue of cloning. True, we need reasoned and wise ethicists to develop standards, but your values and mine (biblical values) have to permeate the soil of society at the grassroots level. Let’s not leave it up to the ethicists… no, like I said, they’re way behind the curve. It should and can be our responsibility to influence the way our community ends up either accepting or rejecting human cloning.
So, may I encourage you that as you listen to the various presidential candidates, would you please pay attention to how these candidates and other politicians confront the human cloning debate, especially when you hear them talk about religious values and public health?
Because man is made in God's image! Right there is the watershed doctrine. That’s the mountain to die on. That’s the ground to defend. And we need to draw the line in the sand right there on that mountain or else the very idea of drawing lines on this issue of human cloning will vanish altogether.
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