Last week, my colleague Dr. Prentice who is Senior Fellow for Life Sciences at Family Research Council and Dr. Andy Harris (R-MD) who has sponsored the Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2012 and has been an active voice in bioethics discussions on Capitol Hill presented a lecture on human cloning.
In the FRC lecture, Dr. Prentice discussed the scientific process of cloning and its prevalence, the current studies and results available, timeline of human cloning, its ethics (or lack thereof), and legislative proposals to ban human cloning.
In the question and answer session with Dr. Harris, what struck me the most was his description of the genetically complete human being at all stages of development and why cloning is wrong:
[People make a] distinction between reproductive cloning and non-reproductive [cloning]…Taking the same technique and doing exactly the same way— the only difference is whether you kill the embryo at a certain number of days or not, [as if it] somehow makes it legitimate to have created the embryo. How’s that again? We have to challenge people [who] say, “Well, it’s not for reproduction.” Well what part of cloning is wrong: is it just if you give birth to a clone or you create the clone? … I hope all of you are aware- one cell, you’re exactly the same as you are now, except you’re a lot bigger. Your genetics is exactly the same; you just have a whole lot more cells. But you have a whole lot more cells than when you were a one year old too, and that doesn’t mean [as] a one year old you were not a human being or you were not entitled to protection.”
What a wonder, that when we were one cell, our genetics were exactly the same as today! Were we any less human at one year old than now? No. Were we any less human as a one-celled human than we are now? No. It is mysterious and miraculous that we are the same genetically complete human beings at one cell development as we are as full-fledged adults.
We must do what we can to pass the Human Cloning Prohibition Act and similar measures to defend the littlest of humans, even one-celled humans, from the destructive and careless forces of scientists and laboratories that do not revere and protect the sanctity of all human life
LifeNews Note: Arina Grossu is the director of the Center for Human Dignity at the Family Research Council.
