To Clone or Not to Clone: What Saith the Commandments? ©2001
By Dwight A. Moody, Dean of Chapel, Georgetown College, Georgetown, KY
The place to post the Ten Commandments is on the office wall of Pannayiotis Zavos. Zavos is, in the words of Time magazine, "the well-known infertility specialist of the University of Kentucky." He has announced his intentions to clone a human.
Cloning is the product of human curiosity and scientific discovery. For sheer power to amaze, for brute unthinkableness, for unmitigated audacity, cloning has moved to the front of the line. It has leapfrogged over atom splitting, space walking, genome counting, and web traveling (and all other stunning developments in the remarkable sage of modern technology) to become the dilemma of choice for all who bring moral discernment to bear on public policy.
Who would have thought cloning possible? Who would have thought it permissible? Who would have thought it desirable? Who would have thought it moral? Who now comprehends the height and depth of the ethical issues involved?
An arresting counterpart to the somewhat clandestine efforts to clone a human is the grassroots clamor to post the Ten Commandments in public places. A modern quandary is balanced by an ancient moral code.
The question is whether this top ten list of Hebrew wisdom can help negotiate this number one item of contemporary debate.
"Do not covet," says commandment number ten.
Accumulation is the hallmark of our culture. When this desire to acquire leads us to manipulate life and law, does it move into the arena of this command? Or is cloning a remarkably accurate way to keep what is most truly ours, namely, our own DNA?
"Do not kill" is a powerful and persistent rule of civilization. But cloning raises to a higher pitch the argument over when life begins.
"Each of the embryos is a human being simply by dint of its genetic makeup." So said one church statement. Cloning requires the creation of many embryos before one emerges that suits the parameters of scientific progress. The others are extinguished. Is this murder?
Many contend the chief motive behind the campaign to clone is money. Make no mistake; there is much to be made. This certainly invokes again rule number ten, but it also challenges the one about telling the truth: "Do not bear false witness." Are those who know telling the truth about the risk to human life as well as the benefits to their bottom line?
One man wants to clone his mother. She is dying much too young, he says. Is this effort to perpetuate her life and legacy done in obedience to the command to "honor parents"? Some will say it is more about Oedipus than about honor.
And then there is rule number one: "Have no other gods before me."
The charge is made that cloning is "playing God." It is an old accusation, heard at every turn, from atomic energy to organ transplant, from contraception to euthanasia. It has been used so often it has lost much of it`s moral punch.
Except for this: the ancient Hebrew prohibition against deities other than Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, was directed at the pervasive appeal of fertility goddesses!
Perhaps we are indeed back where we started; perhaps the ancients knew something about life and truth and right and wrong; perhaps it is not something new but something old that needs our attention; perhaps those commandments might look just fine on the wall in the good doctor`s office; perhaps, indeed!
