Cloning humans: how religions view it
November 20, 2007, 9:45 pm
Posted by Joseph A. Komonchak
Today’s NY Times has an article on different attitudes of religions with regard to cloning human beings. Laws against it tend to prevail in countries that once were Christian, whereas in Asian countries, in particular, research into such cloning is not only not frowned upon by religious people but is actively supported. Prominent Western scientists who wish to engage in such research have been moving to Asian countries. Genetic manipulation of other animal species and of plants is also regarded quite differently, but not along the same lines as cloning humans.
A map puts the differences very dramatically.
I’ve come to look at religion as a layered thing. A “majority” of a religious group’s adherents may or may not speak for the heart of the religion. The heart of the religion (usually the monks) may not be heard from.
I would be interested in knowing what the majority of Buddhist monks think about human cloning: whether its tenuous resemblance to reincarnation is outweighed by the spiritually crass desire to master the directions of history.
Perhaps Easterners are more comfortable with nature than Westerners and see themselves as an integral part of nature more than Westerners. The idea of a Creator systematically constructing the world in six days perhaps gives Christians a certain fear of “messing” with the world, and especially with human beings, who are supposed to be the pinnacle of creation. I would bet almost everyone in the west knows the story of Frankenstein, and in fact “Young Frankenstein” is playing on Broadway right now (in spite of the strike). It is not surprising that genetically modified food is called Frankenfood.
Also, perhaps Easterners are not burdened with the concept of “natural law.” A quote from an article by Ernst van den Haag in National Review about twenty years ago impressed me: “I forgo discussing prescriptive natural law, since, without religion, nature has no prescriptive authority.”
I am sure eastern thought is more subtle than the article conveyed — but it was illuminating all the same, in that it traced the consequences of believing in a “creator deity” as encompassing an extreme ethical unease with the notion of “playing God,” which does explain the outsize emphasis on reproductive medical issues as an ethical problem in the west, and why easterners simply don’t seem to possess a parallel fixation.
Many years ago (late 1970s) I was browsing in Barnes & Noble, and I overheard someone asking one of the employees where they could find the book “Who Should Play God?” The employee clearly had no idea what the book was about, and I was amused by his response. He pointed to a nearby row of shelves and said, “Try over there in Personal Growth.”
The full title of the book was “Who Should Play God?: The Artificial Creation of Life and What It Means for the Future of the Human Race.” The book is long out of print, but it might be interesting to see what someone had to say about the topic 30 years ago. Used copies are available on Amazon for $0.01.
Insofar as Eastern thought includes notions of karma and the fruits of karma (karma is the act of choice, whereas the fruits of karma, the consequences of the choices, are what most Westerners think is meant by karma), it must have something analogous to natural law. The only difference would likely be in the level of nuance allowed for.
The idea that reality itself teaches moral lessons, in part through the consequences of choices, seems exactly like the kind of world a loving creator would produce. I say this as a father of three boys.
I am not at all certain, however, that the policies of a country like China can be read as indicative of religious convictions.
Earlier this month I attended a conference in Cairo on embryonic stem cell research in Islamic traditions. One of the striking lessons I took away from the conference was just how diverse Muslim views of the status of the early embryo are. A casual reading of Islamic bioethics sources in the West would give you a very different impression, namely, that Islam is not troubled by embryonic stem cell research because the early embryo is not considered a person. Judging from the conference, many Muslim theologians would dissent from that view. I suspect that we would discover the same diversity among Buddhists with regard to cloning.
As Paul Lauritzen posits, there do seem to be a diversity of views among Buddhists as to cloning (if some google research of the issue is any indication). Some of the differing concerns are set forth in this excerpt from a paper on the issue:
http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:2pRvVFkH-vwJ:www.tomwmiller.com/tcsnwebpage_073.htm+buddhism+%2B+cloning&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us
I found especially interesting this excerpt from the excerpt:
“Buddhist scholars generally agree that the process by which children are born into the world makes no difference. ‘Individuals can begin their lives in many ways,’ including but not limited to human sexual generation. Cloning is thereby understood as an alternative method of generating new human life, in principle continuous with other methods (Keown). One Buddhist ethicist has supported use of reproductive technology, so long as it benefits the couple who wish to have a child and does not bring pain or suffering. However, some Buddhist scholars find in human cloning an impoverished approach to procreation. It marks a diminished creativity and diversity, analogous to the difference between the creativity, initiative, and investment that is required for an original painting and the mechanistic process required to reproduce the painting (Nolan).”
It’s still available, and at minimal cost ….. try $4.13, including S&H:
http://www.addall.com/New/compare.cgi?dispCurr=USD&id=250917&isbn=0440095522&location=10000&thetime=20071121131650&author=&title=&state=AK
TITLE: Who should play God?: The artificial creation of life and what it means for the future of the human race
by Jeremy Rifkin
ISBN: 0440-09552-2
ISBN 13: 978-0440-09552-1
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Publish Date: 1977-12
Binding: Binding Unknown
List Price: USD 8.95
Rightly or wrongly, I associate Jeremy Rifkin with a certain type of hysteria whatever it is that he’s writing about. Not that he’s always wrong, but he’s almost always alarmist.
Also, regarding the comment on Buddhist thoughts on human cloning — I do think that it’s important to keep in mind that “cloning” as referred to by stem cell research scientist does not refer to actual reproduction, but to something called somatic nuclear transfer, which, in essence creates something that could under the right conditions result in live birth of a “copy” of the person whose cells were transferred to the egg. But that is not the intent of the process (assuming it could ever be perfected). So any objection premised on diminishing diversity would not apply to nearly every use of various stem cell and reproductive technologies, whose purpose is to cure (and not to create copies of) existing humans, or to create new ones who are as diverse from their parents as any other human is.
If life begins at conception, when does it begin for a clone (if at all)?
From the Catechism: [365] The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the “form” of the body: i.e., it is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living, human body; spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature.
If God creates a soul at the moment of conception, will he also create a soul when a scientist puts the nucleus of of a human somatic cell inside a human egg cell from which the nucleus has been removed and tricks it into growing into an embryo? It would be an interesting validation of certain religious ideas if, for some inexplicable reason, when all the cellular ingredients and enzymes (or whatever it takes) are assembled to make a human clone, it just doesn’t work (because God declines to create a soul). But has anyone seriously predicted that will happen?
Are we just speaking metaphorically when we say that God creates a soul at the moment of conception, or when we say the soul leaves the body at death. Is there really such an entity as a soul?
David–
I don’t know that anyone is saying that God creates a soul at the moment of conception. Nobody knows the ‘when’ of the “unity of soul and body” except God. Is it wise, however, for any of us to pick anywhere but the moment of conception for ensoulment? Is that a risk (possible estrangement from God for eternity) that anyone wants to take? Call me a wimp, but it’s not a risk I’m prepared to take. Also, the fact that some humans are attempting cloning of other humans (either by trying to create exact duplicates of existing individuals, or by destroying embryos to create stem cells) isn’t a plausible basis for a hypothetical about when and if God ensouls the man-made end product of such tinkering. Just as we can’t fool Mother Nature, we can’t fool God.
William,
First, I was excited to find the following in the Catechism
2274 Since it must be treated from
conception as a person, the embryo
must be defended in its integrity,
cared for, and healed, as far as
possible, like any other human
being.
Michael J. Sandel, in The Case Against Perfection (the book, not the article) says, “If embryo loss that accompanies natural procreation were the moral equivalent of infant death, then pregnancy would have to be regarded as a public health crisis of epidemic proportions . . . .”
It does seem to me that if we are to accept the paragraph in the Catechism, then it must be acknowledged that there is almost total indifference to the massive death rate (50 to 80 percent) of a whole class of individuals–the preimplantation embryos. It is true, as you have pointed out, that there is no deliberate killing involved, as with abortion or stem cell research. (I believe I have read that when in vitro fertilization is done, the death rate of preimplantation embryos is actually lower than in natural procreation.) Keeping a baby alive that is born very prematurely can easily cost $1 million dollars, and few question the expenditure of all that money and the use of all the needed resources. But almost no one thinks anything at all should be done about early embryo loss. My point is that Catholics (and others who claim to believe life begins at conception) are either being very inconsistent, or they really don’t believe life begins at conception.
I also found this in the Catechism
366 The Church teaches that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God – it is not “produced” by the parents . . . .
I take it that “immediately” means “directly.” I know this is a question on about the grade school level at best, but why would God create a soul for a cloned human being? It seems to me that human cloning simply shouldn’t be possible unless God creates a soul for the clone. Is anyone betting that human cloning will never succeed because God will not create a soul for what scientists tinker together in the lab?
Right you are David and no one has nor can anyone refute you.
A positive sign is that the bishops, for the first time in a long time, have stressed other issues. They also said that “We do not tell Catholics how to vote.”
Hopefully, the obsession with one issue is over.
The new York times also reports today that dr.James thomson.a pioneer stem cell researcher, has suceeded in reversing the development of a skin cell back into its initial plenipotent state.
If the Catholic ethicisns are correct that a single cell plenipotent cell is a human person, then it seems that Dr.Thompson has succeeded in cloning a human person. IStm that the moral issues Involved are the same in both kinds of cloning, though I have read that some Catholic moralists would not object to Dr. Thomson’s kind.
That the Asians intend to bring the process to term is the big moral difference. — the question becomes : who is responsible for the child? ISTM that producing a second person with the same jeans is no different from producing identical twins would be,though having a child who is also your twin could easily present some psycological problems.
Complexity, complexity.
jeans?? That would be a trick. I meant “genes”.
TIME MAGAZINE
Should Fertilized Eggs Have Rights?
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1686729,00.html
I cannot help but feel that only someone completely ignorant of Catholic theology and Eastern mysticism could state that the east hold a greater respect for the natural order. A metaphysical system with the express purpose of escaping the natural order seems to the polar opposite of the Incarnation and the resurrection of the dead.
As to human cloning, I assure you that the Catholic Church affirms that my fraternal twin brothers each have a soul, despite the separation having occured post-fertilization. Perhaps a return to an Aristotlean-Thomistic view of the soul is more beneficial than the Augustinian dualism that seems to be the craze of both the arch-conservatives and the wishy-washy cumbayah Catholics. Despite the problems Armand Maurer noted concerning Aristotle’s concept of species and the theory of evolution.
I’m less concerned THAT humans can be cloned than about WHY someone would want to clone them.
Nothing of the reasons I can come up with are anything short of narcissistic or de-humanizing.
Clone yourself? What egotism! Clone a dead child (example used in the article)? How could someone be happy knowing they are merely a replacement, a stand-in for a dead person? And to what extent does cloning a loved one cheapen the life of that loved one?
Create a clone because you can’t have your own children? In vitro fertilization is already dicey and expensive, and diverts opportunities away from kids who need foster and adoption care.
Other motives seem even more nefarious. Clone a race of docile worker bees? Clone an army? Clone people to be organ donors (the premise of Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Never Let Me Go”?) Essentially, create a group of disposable individuals who will age and die prematurely, as animal cloning experiments seem to indicate.
Rather than worry about the ensoulment of cloned individuals–would a merciful God abandon clones, created at the whim of very fallible humans for less-than-altruistic reasons?–I think we should be concerned for the souls of those who think cloning is a good idea.
Adam,
I didn’t say the “east holds a greater respect for the natural order.” I said, “Perhaps Easterners are more comfortable with nature than Westerners and see themselves as an integral part of nature more than Westerners.” Also, the Times article mentioned nothing about Catholic theology (nor did I), but instead spoke of three broad groups: traditional Christians, post-Christians, and followers of Eastern religions.
Whatever Catholic theology may say about nature and the physical world, broadly speaking, “popular” Christianity considers it to be inferior and tainted. Human nature is damaged as a result of the fall of Adam and Eve, and in fact the whole physical world seems to have been damaged as well (“Cursed be the ground because of you!”). The Christian goal is to get to heaven, and when people die, you often hear Christians say, “They’ve gone to a better place.” They have escaped this “valley of tears.”
As for the Incarnation, I don’t know whether it is generally considered to exalt the physical world or to be a humiliation for the Son (“And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.”)
It is true that Christians expect the resurrection of the dead, but we will be resurrected not with our “vile bodies” but with “glorified bodies.” As described in the excerpt at the end of this message, “glorified bodies” can hardly be considered something within the “natural order”!
Regarding my question about cloning, did you catch the beginning of the sentence where I said, “I know this is a question on about the grade school level at best . . . . .”? It would certainly be odd if I had raised the question whether one of a pair of twins had no soul. If God creates souls at the moment of conception, why would he not create a new soul at the moment of twinning? My question is rather that if scientists engage in something the Catholic Church would presumably deem intrinsically evil by tricking somatic cells into thinking they were gametes and producing a human being by cloning, why would God dignify a laboratory process by creating a soul.
I would be interested to hear your complete taxonomy of Catholics (there must at least be a third group besides “arch-conservatives and the wishy-washy cumbayah Catholics”) but in any case, to the extent I understand your comments about the soul, I think you may be onto something. The idea of a soul that is a “thing” created at conception, which somehow coincides with the physical body but leaves at death and awaits reunion with the glorified body on Judgment Day, raises the kind of “grade school” questions that occur to me and apparently don’t have any good answers.
APPENDIX ON GLORIFIED BODIES**********
Saint Thomas and the others identify the four “properties” of the glorified body: impassibility, subtility, agility, clarity. Professor Ludwig Ott, in his reliable Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, presents a helpful summary of these characteristics of the glorified body.
Impassibility means the incapability of suffering any kind of physical evils: death, sorrow, illness, etc. The glorified body will be free of these maladies, which cause so much anguish here in this life.
Subtility has been described as the “power to penetrate.” No material objects will deter the glorified body from moving to and fro. Instead, the glorified body, after the example of Jesus’ Risen Body, will have complete ability to move from one place to another unrestricted.
Agility is the power of the body to move easily and quickly at the soul’s behest. No longer “weighed down,” the human body in Heaven will move with great rapidity and amazing elegance.
Clarity means brilliance. The glorified body will shine with an unmistakable radiance, much as the Body of Jesus appeared at the Transfiguration. The glorified body will be full of splendor and radiance to the extent that the soul possesses clarity, which in turn depends on the soul’s merits. Referring to Pope Saint Gregory the Great (538?-604), Saint Thomas asserts: “Thus in the glorified body the glory of the soul will he known, even as through a crystal is known the color of a body contained in a crystal vessel …” (Summa Theologica, Suppl. 85, 1).
**********
http://www.catholic.net/RCC/Periodicals/Faith/0304-97/ESCHATOL.html
Jean,
I personally don’t expect to see human cloning done to create babies that can be raised to become adults (although I could very well be wrong), but the questions that occurred to me about souls would also apply (in Catholic thought) to any creation in the lab, for any reason, of something that could POTENTIALLY grow into a human being, even if it were the intention of the scientists involved never to let that happen (see Barbara’s message above, the ninth message from the top).
To those who believe in reincarnation, or those who don’t believe life begins at conception, or to those who don’t believe in souls, there is no problem accounting for the ultimate fate of the billions of early embryos that fail to implant, the frozen embryos in fertility clinics, or any similar losses. To those who believe in reincarnation, if there is a sould involved, it just moves on to its next incarnation. To those who believe there is no sould involved in the earliest stages, or who don’t believe in souls at all, there is no problem with the ultimate fate of the embryo, since it’s just at most a potential person. But to those who believe that life (and personhood) begin with the first spark, there are a tremendous number of souls whose ultimate fate one can only speculate about.
David, I hope I am not a hysteric, but I certainly admit I’m not Little Mary Sunshine about grown up human beings.
People will pursue the limits of their technology and curiosity, and when they enter shaky moral territory, will justify it with some kind of “humanitarian” varnish, such as that we’re helping fight dread diseases or making it possible for infertile couples to have babies or whatever.
I realize that you and I belong to a Church that refuses to hold out anything more than the encouragement to hope that God is kind and merciful enough to accept into Paradise the souls of unborn babies.
I also I believe that God is less stingy in his love and mercy than is strictly sanctioned by Church teaching.
So it’s the souls of the creators of human clones that I worry about more.
I am not advocating the birth of clones, but clones would be at least as different from their progenitors as identical twins are from each other, and would likely be even more different because experience and memory are not genetically transmissible (at least twins are exposed to more or less the same environmental conditions, unless they are separated early).
But Jean’s comments spark, for me, a rather negative reaction. Imagine having your child baptized and the priest asking you in accusatory tones why it was that you decided to reproduce rather than adopt. What would your answer be? It is my experience that those facing infertility or other impediments to childbearing often ask these questions of themselves over and over and are quite a bit more aware of, and have more fully considered, the ethical dimensions of assisted reproduction, adoption, fostering, and yes, even childfree living than those of us who get babies the old fashioned way, and yet it is we who feel entitled to smug and unself-conscious judgment of their motives for having children because we have a more or less blank check from our church. Arrogance is not too harsh a word for that judgmental thinking.
Bill Mazzella refers to the obsession with one issue. I presume [perhaps incorrectly] that he means abortion. I wonder if he would have objected to an obsession with the issue of slavery [which, alas, did not much concern American bishops of the time, despite the popes' condemnation of the "peculiar institution"]. Or would it have been a single-minded obsession to have condemned the Shoah?
The abortion issue is tied into many evils; it is a total disrespect for the human person. And a total disrespect for women. And a failure to address the questions of poverty and of support for mothers. Abortion is just throwing these problems out the window with the “foetus”.
Mr. Nichols, allow me to quote Chesterton, an author I hope we can both agree had a particular command of Catholic thought, at least according to such eminent thomists as Gilson, D’Arcy, Pegis, Pieper, and Maritain: “Now nobody will begin to understand the Thomist philosophy, or indeed the Catholic philosophy, who does not realise that the primary and fundamental part of it is entirely the praise of Life, the praise of Being, the praise of God as the Creator.” (St Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox).
As to your distinction between the philosophy (or rather philosophies) and the actual practice of ‘Easterners’ regarding their place in nature, I assert that not only is Catholic philosophy (properly understood) generally more balanced and optimistic towards man’s place in nature than is the wealth of eastern philosophy/religions; but additionally, when properly comparing apples with apples, westerners are far more healthy in their relationship with nature than easterners.
Firstly, as concerns philosophy, eastern thought (especially Buddhism) is essentially nihilistic, a disembodied atheistic mysticism. As the joke about the Buddhist visiting a New York hot-dog stand goes, “Make me one with everything” in the east is interpreted as the complete renunciation and destruction of identity that is diametrically opposed to the wealth of Catholic mysticism. But this is all an aside as you noted about the distinction between philosophy and practice. Likewise Maritain notes, “in proportion as it has secured wide acceptance, Buddhism has ceased to be atheistic, only to fall into the most degraded conceptions of deity. Popular Buddhism as practised to-day in many parts of Asia, where, to adapt itself to existing beliefs, it has assumed the most varied shapes…totally different from philosophic Buddhism.” (Introduction to Philosophy).
But when we look at actual praxis, I must speak from experience (the experience of growing up in rural Canada and having taught and lived in Asia) and history. Personally consumerism in Asia is far more rampant than in North America and is mitigated by poverty, not by some general sense of natural order. Historically the east has not come close to producing anything similar to classical and medieval science (A.N. Whitehead), 18th century romanticism or the modern green movement (which is entirely western, though ironically many of its proponents hold to superficial eastern philosophies, Dali Lama style platitudes which are a mix of Deepak Chopra and Oprah). Any apparent naturalism in the east is the sheer result of poverty and subsistence lifestyles. If we were to compare the middle classes of east and west, no tangible difference exists in my experience and the advantage likely goes to conservation conscious westerners.
As to a stream of Augustinian/Jansenism that remains in Catholic philosophy, without a doubt it unfortunately exists and perhaps has become more pronounced due to Catholicism’s rapprochement to Protestantism and recent (post-1970s) Augustinian turn with the passing of the neo-thomist age (Maritian, Gilson, Chenu, Congar, Rahner, Copleston, de Lubac, Theilard de Chardin, D’arcy, etc). When we look back at the conflict between Abelard and Bernard, one quickly became a saint, the other temporarily banished; however, it was Abelard’s optimism and positive outlook (intentionally based ethics) that eventually won out in the form of Thomism, “It is the thesis that there are no bad things, but only bad uses of things. If you will, there are no bad things but only bad thoughts; and especially bad intentions. Only Calvinists can really believe that hell is paved with good intentions.” (The Dumb Ox again)
There is one example of an eastern society attempting to regain an agrarian ideal, and that is of Pol Pots Khmer Rouge, though it never looked to the yeoman as ideal, unlike much of the western world during industrialization. China’s ‘great leap forward’ might be another example of equal failure
As concerning the soul, I am in complete agreement with you that “The idea of a soul that is a “thing” created at conception, which somehow coincides with the physical body but leaves at death and awaits reunion with the glorified body on Judgment Day, raises the kind of “grade school” questions that occur to me and apparently don’t have any good answers.” Though I do not have any answers and I think that Ludwig Ott’s comments are just as juvenile, I do seem some hope in the Thomistic stream of though concerning the soul and the concept of form (as opposed to Platonic/Augustinian dualism), “St. Thomas stood up stoutly for the fact that a man’s body is his body as his mind is his mind; and he can only be a balance and union of the two.” (The Dumb Ox, what a fabulous book).
Coupled with modern genetics, perhaps there in lies part of the solution to the problem of cloning, remembering that twins are merely natural clones as a cell or group of cells separate after fertilization. I view clones as the equivalent of twins separated by decades.
Barbara, I’ll clarify my opinion, but this may be one of those exchanges where we have to agree to disagree.
My opinion merely boils down to this:
Those who can’t or would prefer not to have children “normally” or with a simple surgical fix-it (and for some years I was sure I was one of them) may elect to adopt or foster those who are already here.
Others may try the technological alternatives that could result in biological reproduction, including fertility procedures, drugs, and in vitro fertilization. Cloning may someday be an option, either here or abroad.
Current techno-options may be expensive, cause severe short-term side effects, and be extremely dicey. Animal cloning seems to indicate the clones suffer from premature aging and possibly other weaknesses.
Moreover, some fertility drugs and procedures leave women having to choose to have some embryos removed (aborted) or suffer the health risks of multiple births and possible damage to the unborn babies.
After doing a LOT of research in this area, we decided it was more sensible to spend the $10,000-$20,000 we had on adoption instead of the roulette wheel that infertility treatments can sometimes be (and the house never loses).
I realize many couples don’t want to adopt. Their arguments against it may be unpersuasive to me, but if they’re against adoption, they, by all means, should NOT adopt.
I certainly didn’t mean to imply that what I see as a more sensible and humane course of action (adoption over some infertility methods) should be enshrined in canon law, that anybody who has biological children is selfish, or that the priest ought to give everybody who doesn’t do what I say a good bawling out.