Putting that Genie Back in the Bottle. Today's evening newscasts are talking about new progress in cloning technology, occasioned by an advance in South Korea. The pretense of some observers is that we have to give in to the worst possible uses of this technology, and are incapable of limiting its use.
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If some people want to create clones of existing human beings, to grow as other children do and become adults just like anybody else, should we object? I don't see why. There's no moral issue whatsoever there, any more than in any other form of reproduction.
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Should we permit "scientists" to create a human life for the express purpose of destroying it to create benefits to others? Surely not, any more than it would be proper to let a baby be born just to slit its throat and chop it up for parts, or to grab any one of us off the street and chop us up for parts for people we do not know and do not want to die for.
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If some people are so eager to chop up one person for the benefit of others, they should volunteer their own bodies. So let me pose this challenge to them:

If you are so adamant about helping sick people, put yourself on the sacrificial chopping block — now, before your natural death, not after you've already died from an accident or gotten so old that your organs aren't usable — so we can distribute your organs and cells of all kinds to other people. You have the right to do that. Prove your sincerity. Die for others. If you're not willing to die for others, however, you cannot properly even advocate that any innocent person die for the benefit of strangers.

Society would have the right to kill vicious criminals and chop their bodies up for parts for decent people — tho we would have to follow recipients very carefully to see if there is some biological taint.
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We don't really know what causes a lot of behaviors. Criminality, and especially murder, is regarded by some people as so deviant as to be in itself a form of madness. Where does such madness or deviant behavior start? In a healthy brain? a diseased brain? In the DNA of the individual, any organ? We don't really know. Perhaps in transplanting organs from, for instance, serial killers, we would be transplanting a genetic predisposition to violent crime. Probably not, but I'd want to watch very carefully what happens to people who receive organs from executed criminals.
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What society does not have the right to do is to offer me or any other innocent person to be chopped up for parts, nor even put pressure upon us to sacrifice ourselves. It doesn't matter if that person is 60 years old or 5 days old.
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The fact is that any human clone could, with the proper environment and a little bit of luck, grow up to be a complete human being separate from every other, including his or her sole parent.
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A clone is no more a part of its parent than any other child is part of its parent. You cannot morally kill your son or daughter to steal his or her heart, liver, kidneys, or any other part. Nor can you kill anybody else's kid to steal their parts.
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The morality is clear — to moral people. A lot of people don't like to deal with the harsh clarity of morality. They like to fudge to their own advantage. Different people can rationalize away different levels of immorality. Some won't accept so much as "sampling" a single cherry in a supermarket. Others see no problem with eating bunches of grapes without paying; or cheating on taxes; or shoplifting a sweater they can't afford; or raping someone who won't consent to sex; or killing somebody who ticks them off.
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Not every moral issue has black-or-white clarity, but some do. Killing the unborn, no matter their age, is one that is crystal clear, no matter the rationalizations that various stupid or morally lazy people may offer.
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So what can we do to protect children from being created for the express purpose of being chopped up for parts? Are we helpless against advances in technology? To argue we are, is to argue that no technology can be controlled, so all should be legalized for everyone. We do not take that attitude toward nuclear proliferation, do we?
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We seem to think that some things are so wrong and so dangerous that we have to control them. Nuclear weapons are one. Cloning technology to create babies for the express purpose of chopping them up for parts is another.
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The mere fact that you are physically or technologically capable of doing something does not mean you have the right to do it. Nor does it mean that society cannot stop you.
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The whole issue is easily solved. Simply declare that any "scientist" who creates a human being and then willfully destroys him or her has committed murder, and the punishment is death — an automatic, unappealable death sentence to be carried out by chopping that scientist up for parts! That would bring all this child-menacing "science" to a stop: a dead stop.
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And about that genie-in-the-bottle comparison. It was
possible to get the genie into the bottle in the first place, wasn't it?
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 1,629.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 7:11 PM