Pope Benedict XVI Blog

Implication of 1997 report of cloned primates successfully brought to birth: birth of human clones clearly possible

The Church's stance against human cloning is clear. Human beings become human beings at conception: "No ifs, ands, or buts". In other words, even if the human embryo is only at its primary level--the fertilized ovum--it always remains a human being. It is not "potentially" a human being, but ontologically a human being. Any tampering with or cloning of human embryos for "therapeutic reasons" is therefore verboten.

In order to overcome a natural built-in abhorrence to such meddling with the God-given "stuff" which makes us all human, scientists in hot pursuit of human cloning for "therapeutic reasons" must obscure the actual science of cloning. They try to avoid the grievious moral implications of their work by changing the language that describes the scientific procedures involved. They use phrases that denigrate the humanity of the cloned embryo. Cloned embryos become just "products of nuclear transfer," lacking in basic human potential and are not, therefore, real human life.

And, so the rationale goes: If the "product of nuclear transfer" is not human life, why would there be any moral or ethical reason to oppose its usefulness for "therapy"? The same convenient and specious logic has been used since Roe v. Wade to describe babies as "fetuses" who are not human, but only "potentially" human until birth.

It Didn't Start With Dolly - Human Cloning is Close at Hand

by Wesley J. Smith
May 1, 2005

LifeNews.com Note: Award winning author Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture. An attorney, Smith's new book Consumer's Guide to a Brave New World was published in the fall.

HERE'S AN EASY POP QUIZ: What's the name of the first cloned mammal? If you answered, "Dolly," that would be . . . wrong.

Wrong? But wasn't Dolly the sheep touted by the media as the first mammal ever made "asexually" through the cell nuclear transfer cloning process? Yes, but there are a lot of things you hear from the scientific/media establishment that are not exactly accurate.

The first cloned mammals to be brought into being "asexually" via cell nuclear transfer cloning and gestated through birth were lambs born nearly two years before Dolly. As reported by Ian Wilmut and his team in the March 7, 1996, Nature, they took the cell nuclei out of sheep embryo cells, placed each into a sheep egg that had had its own nucleus removed, fused them, and thereby generated cloned sheep embryos.

Wilmut's team then implanted their embryos into ewes, resulting in five live births. Two lambs survived. The scientists announced this breakthrough as follows: "Here we provide the first report . . . of live mammalian offspring following nuclear transfer from an established cell line." Wilmut explicitly identified the lambs as "cloned."

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posted by Dr. Denice Hanley, DPM, M.Div. @ 7:36 AM