Cloning

Cloning is the artificial biological reproduction of a genetically identical (or nearly identical) individual from an existing organism through asexual genetic techniques.

- There are two distinct procedures:

• Cloning by embryo splitting (blastomere separation).- This mimics the natural process that produces identical twins. When the human embryo consists of 4 to 8 cells, each cell (blastomere) remains totipotent; if isolated, each cell can develop into an identical twin embryo. In reproductive science, this artificial separation is termed embryo-splitting or twinning.
• Cloning by somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT).- The nucleus of an unfertilized ovum is removed (enucleation); an adult somatic cell is then fused with this enucleated ovum. The resulting cell possesses the complete diploid nucleus of the donor within the cytoplasm of an enucleated egg. This reconstructed cell is stimulated to develop into a new organism genetically nearly identical to the nuclear donor. It is nearly identical rather than absolute, because mitochondrial DNA from the maternal cytoplasm also influences development.

So-called therapeutic cloning utilizes somatic cell nuclear transfer not to bring a child to birth, but to generate a human clone to serve as a biological resource for disease treatment. The procedure creates a human clone, extracts its pluripotent embryonic stem cells, and destroys the living embryo in the process.

No, certainly not. Technological feasibility is never the criterion of moral goodness. Modern technology enables a terrorist to detonate weapons of mass destruction from afar, yet doing so remains gravely evil. Science must always remain at the service of the moral good of the human person.

Cloning inflicts grave harm upon human dignity in multiple fundamental ways:

• A laboratory technician predetermines the entire genetic identity of a human being; no person would ever wish to be the subject of such total biological manipulation.
• The cloned individual is designed as a copy of a predecessor, compromising his unique individuality and personal dignity. He risks being evaluated as a "defective copy" depending on how closely he resembles the original.
• The cloned person does not originate as the fruit of mutual, reciprocal marital love, but as an engineered manufacturing product designed to satisfy the desires and expectations of third parties.
• Fundamental family relationships are deeply distorted: for instance, a cloned girl would be the biological identical twin of her mother while having no biological father.
• Maternity is degraded, reducing woman to a mere provider of biological materials (oocyte supplier) or an instrument of gestational hire.

- Animal experimentation reveals severe intrinsic risks and catastrophic loss of life:

• Creating a single viable clone requires reckless experimentation and massive destruction of embryonic life. For example, producing the famous sheep Dolly required the sacrifice of 276 sheep embryos, in addition to hundreds destroyed in preceding trials.
• There is an extraordinarily high incidence of severe genetic anomalies, organ failure, accelerated aging, and premature death, as conclusively demonstrated in mammalian cloning trials (Dolly suffered from severe arthritis and died prematurely).