Human Cloning
Should human cloning be banned ? Should reproductive human cloning always be prohibited?
Cloning is playing God. It is not merely intervention in the body’s natural processes, but the creation of a new and wholly unnatural process of asexual reproduction. Clerics within the Catholic, Moslem and Jewish faiths have all expressed their opposition to human cloning.However, this objection to cloning is not specifically theological. David Hume, the eighteenth-century Scottish moral philosopher, warned us to heed our feelings as much as our logical reasoning. Leon R. Kass of the University of Chicago has stated in relation to human cloning, that mere failure to produce scientific reasons against the technology, does not mean we should deny our strong and instinctive reactions to it. As he states, there is a "wisdom in repugnance".
Reproductive cloning harms the integrity of the family. Single people will be able to produce offspring without even the physical presence of a partner. Once born, the child will be denied the love of one parent, most probably the father. Several theologians have recognised that a child is a symbolic expression of the mutual love of its parents, and their hope for the future. This sign of love is lost when a child’s life begins in a laboratory.
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