“Let s make man in our image, after our likeness,” said Almighty God in Chapter 17 Genesis. Now, “Clone-Aid” – a Caribbean company, advertising human clones (at a cost of $200,000 each) on the Internet is proposing that man can make man in his own image and for his own purposes.

Less than two weeks after Scottish scientists announced they had successfully cloned a sheep, debate on the issue of human cloning is heating up. It appears that Dr. Margaret White, a British doctor and ethicist was right when she predicted that, “ what is done in a laboratory on animals today, will be done in a hospital on humans tomorrow.”

Stating the obvious

With this very real possibility in mind, U.S. president Bill Clinton commissioned a task force to look into many far-reaching implications of human cloning. My question is, do we really need a presidential commission to tell us the obvious?

Are we already so far inside the can of worms that we can’t comprehend the monstrous ramifications of cloning? Do we realize that the criminal justice system would be destroyed in one fell swoop when cloning renders D.N.A. no longer individually unique? Is it not also self-evident that cloning would result in scientists creating human life with the express intention of destroying it? (i.e. Clones created solely for the purpose of organ transplantation, etc.) Do we need a commission to tell us that placing a human baby inside a pig or a sheep should not be done?

I don’t look forward to the day when Sci-Fi movies like Brave New World, Soylent Green, Jurassic Park become reality. Neither do I want to pre-select the characteristics of my children, as if ordering fast food at a take-out window, nor am I waiting with baited breath for the announcement that scientists have created the first “Gorilla-Man.” However unsettling, the reality is that once opened, the can of worms, which is cloning, will slither into every area of our lives.

Some argue that we won’t have to confront these thorny ethical and philosophical issues if we allow cloning only as a solution to infertility. But we’ll still be faced wit having to decide who can be clones. All races? All ages? All classes? Only those with suitable genes? Keep in mind too, that homosexual activists are already demanding that cloning technology be made available to them so they can reproduce specifically homosexual offspring.

The bottom line is that cloning, even in the narrowest context would further erode respect for human life, because in spite of carnage, which now surrounds us, somehow we have managed to cling to a vestige of human life as a magical and miraculous gift. Cloning would reduce it to a mere biological recipe.

If our prayers are answered and cloning is banned, many argue that it will simple go underground. They may be right, but at least we won’t be condoning what C.S. Lewis called, “the final assault upon humanity.” In his 1947 work, The Abolition of Man, Lewis argued that this assault would not be a result of an “abuse of political power,” but would result from “our knowledge of pharmacology and genetics.” In his God-given wisdom, Lewis added, “We should not do to minerals and vegetables what modern science threatens to do to man himself.”

Regression underway?

Our regression to this low point in human history has been under way for some time, beginning when we took control of our lives away from God. We became the masters of our own destiny and in no time we were deciding matters of life and death.

Now in an ultimate act of human rebellion and blasphemy, the creation is actually trying to pass itself off as the Creator.

So to those who dare proceed with cloning at your own peril.