Now is the time to vigorously contest human cloning

Panos Zavos, fertility specialist of the USA, and Severino Antinori, Italian fertility specialist, announced in January that they would embark on the first concerted effort to clone a human being. They will work in Europe where there are no protective laws (“Experts fume over human cloning bid”, Rick Weiss, the Washington Post).

# 1 Level of Objections to Human Cloning

Biological Problems
Belief: Zavos, who has announced serious work on human cloning, said: “We have a good understanding of all the failures with animal cloning. We can quality-control embryos now and screen them and make sure that there are no defective genes”
Answer: 1) Animal cloning is basically unsuccessful. 2) Serious problems have occurred in all five cloned mammal species. 3) Defects in organ structure, system functions and cosmetic appearances have brought serious risks to surrogate mothers and early deaths to fetuses and clones brought to full terms.
However many scientists suspect that there are major problems with genetic “imprinting”, a poorly understood molecular mechanism through which genes inside the sperm and egg cells are turned on or off in preparation for early embryonic and fetal development. This problem exists because clones are made from a single adult cell, which is fused with an egg cell whose genes have been removed. There is no test today capable of determining whether the cloned embryo’s genes are properly imprinted, so it is possible to weed out embryos that are doomed to develop abnormally.

# 2 Level of Objections to Human Cloning

Motivations of The Scientists Who encourage Human Cloning

 

Belief: Human cloning is the ultimate biological challenge to science. After cloning mammals the next logical step is human cloning. Because science has conquered much of physical environment why not create life on its most complex level?
Answer: The human mind directed to scientific investigation must have as its primary goal to discover facts and information that can improve the world and all living things. The above motive comes from linear, logical cognition with the lowest ego level of consciousness that is devoid of wisdom.

Belief:.The motive is to create a human clone resistant to all diseases, chemical and functional.
Answer:This is impossible on two bases: bacteria, viruses and fungi that cause disaster are living organized substances that are also changing. We have learned that as we improve vaccines, or as we improve the human host by cloning its protection would be only temporary. Most of the health disturbances are the result of life style choices and genetic susceptibilities. There is growing evidence that the greatest causes of disease and illness are functional disturbances from life style. Therefore human cloning would be of no lasting value.

Belief: The motive is to create a perfect person by manipulating the genes in a human clone. The desirable capacities would be multiplied and the destructive ones eliminated. Theoretically possible?
Answer: Our human imperfections are our stimuli to change, to grow and to improve our way of transacting in the world. The will and choices which makes us human and from which we learn and evolve would be theoretically absent in cloned humans. Ours is an actively involved participation in the world. Theirs would be passive, unchallenging and non-participatory. I ask you: what would it be like to live with perfect humans? I do not believe I could successfully. They would be like gross aliens to us - missing our basic life references.

#3 Level of Objections to Human Cloning

Moral, Ethical Problems

Moral and ethical errors of human cloning must be immediately and vociferously condemned by theologists, philosophers and religious leaders. Their long study of the moral and spiritual dictates humans have created and perpetuated making possible their successful interactions to create lasting societies are in direct conflict with human cloning.
Jaenisch of Whitehead Institute reminded us that we can dispose of cloned abnormal animals, but by medical intervention we would keep alive cloned abnormal humans who would without doubt suffer miserably. He believes that to attempt human cloning is an outrageous criminal enterprise.

Mystical, Spiritual Problems
I am a life scientist who has researched the biovibrations of existence and the mystical spiritual nature of humanness. I believe that human cloning will not succeed. Most of the world people accept the existence of a soul. The question about animal’s soul is more dubious. I can give scientific and clinical evidence for the human soul. My opinion about animal souls, like other persons’, is more subjective. I do believe animals have characteristics that we attribute to a soul that I doubt has the profound human capabilities. Most knowledgeable people who have studied the mystical level of the soul believe it has substance in the form of organized energies and memories of its human existence in other lifehoods. Verney’s extensive studies indicated that the soul’s energy field enters the growing embryo generally not at conception but before the end of the first trimester. From my clinical work opening the mind-field I concur about soul entrance into the embryo or fetus. Sensitive mothers also experience the soul’s entry with changes in the growing organism. Such information leads to the idea that souls are not necessary at the beginning of cellular separation. Probably this rudimentary cellular growth will be possible in human cloning. However I and many others believe that the human soul chooses to inhabit and make human of a growing embryo. Furthermore the soul chooses its genetic background from a man and woman to be its genetic parents. And it chooses its familial and cultural environment with the belief that from that union and those circumstances they as a human person will have opportunity to complete their unfinished evolutionary growth. This is not the predestined aspect of “karma” in its narrowest sense. Regardless of how foreign these ideas may seem, those of us who assist people in their spiritual, emotional and physical growth know that these ideas started with ancient beliefs now subjected to scientific scrutiny are the frontier understandings about humans.
So I ask the question: will a soul choose to inhabit a cloned human, one in which cellular manipulation is part of the human brain which computes basic responses to life? A soul is not on a cellular or a gene level: it is on the divine level.
Imagine a soul accepting a fetus where the memory of experiences is locked in on the cellular level from the donor. I see the experiences of that soul in that organism as a confused catastrophe. How can that new cloned human facilitate the unfinished business of the soul in a perfect body, without fertile ground to grow and change?
I also believe it is impossible to clone a soul from a donor, and seriously doubt that a new soul will ever accept a cloned human fetus. There is sound evidence that human miscarriage occurs when there is a defective organism. I believe that fetal growth does not continue normally by genes alone. It needs the energy directive from a soul to structure the mind to take over the fine finishing touches to the human being.

Conclusions

With the human mind’s fantastic creation skills I believe that scientists at some future date could theoretically with a degree of success clone a human organism. They might be able to replace defective genes with more perfect ones.Yet I abhor the motivations that foster attempts at human cloning and the physical aberrations and suffering which human cloning will create.
I adamantly condemn the moral and ethical destruction inevitable with human cloning. But from the mystical-spiritual level I gather hope for humanity. I believe that a cloned human without soul and higher purpose will not live.

To me the eminent discussion of human cloning is a wake up alarm for who we are and what we are about –to the conscious perfection of the magnificent human organism and the refinement of the ultimate human mind.
I predict that over time the human cloning will be remembered as a thought that shocked us to more rapid evolution. Historically it will be recorder as a tiny wrinkle in advancing societies. Let us be concerned and verbal without panic or threat. If one fraction of the money it would take to seriously research human cloning and a portion of the human energy and intellect to try to make it happen were diligently directed to refine the magnificent human organism, and the profound capacities of the human mind to sense the real world and fully participate, it would exponentially change the world and the human race – the goal our greatest philosophers have always envisioned. Let us remember that the divine level of human existence is in command and always will be in command.