The Fatal Promise of Cloning

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Well, that was then. Today these very same advocates are campaigning hard to permit research cloning--that is, the creation of human embryos for the purpose of taking them apart for their stem cells. They justify this reversal of position by invoking the suffering of millions. And they heap scorn on opponents for letting old promises and arbitrary moral barriers stand in the way of human betterment.

Well, the cow experiment shows the way to even more human betterment. Fetal tissue offers a far simpler and more promising way to produce replacement tissues--it skips all the complications of stem-cell biology and gives you tissue that you can implant right into the human patient. Millions are suffering, are they not?

Millions are suffering. This is precisely the argument that research-cloning advocates are deploying today to allow them to break the moral barrier of creating, for the first time, human embryos solely for their exploitation. What is to prevent "millions are suffering" from allowing them to break the next barrier tomorrow, growing cloned embryos into fetuses?

We will never go there, the research-cloning advocates assure us. Promise. Cross my heart and hope to die. But what are such promises worth? At some point, we need to muster the courage to say no. At some point, we need to say: We too care about human suffering, but we also care about what this research is doing to our humanity.

We need to say that today, before it is too late. The time to stop human cloning is now.