Cloning is becoming an increasingly important subject in the modern world. The biggest breakthrough in cloning was when Dolly the sheep was cloned. After the success of cloning sheep, more effort was put into human cloning. The United States banned the cloning of humans, but there are other countries that have laws that are more lax on the issue of human cloning. Humans are separated from other mammals not only because of the superior intelligence but also because they have souls. A soul, "the actuating cause of an individual life" (Webster) is what makes humans what they are. The soul is the eternal essence of a person, and without it humans are no more than animals. This brings up very interesting issues on the human cloning. If clones have souls then it would not be right for humanity to create them and then use them for their own purpose, such as using them for medical transplants. However if clones do not have souls it would seem appropriate for people to use clones for their own purposes, because these clones would be no better than animals. Even if clones have no souls, this does not make the use of them in medical research immediately appropriate. God is the great creator, and many believe that human cloning is an area of life that humanity should not delve into. Certainly a clone would not have the same soul as the original, yet the very nature of the soul suggests that it cannot be created by man.
Human cloning is still in its infant stage, but the technology is progressing at a blinding rate. Originally cloning ran into a few problems with aging. When the Dolly the sheep was cloned, its cells were older than they were supposed to be. Hence Dolly has a shorter life span than other sheep. This problem was claimed to be fixed by scientists in Russia, but there is no real example of a true human clone that is being allowed to live and grow. Parents who lose their baby's in child birth, could save some of the cells in the hope that they could pay scientists to clone their baby. However if their baby was cloned, its personality would develop differently than their original child, due to different exposure. What is the point in cloning a baby who has never been born. Since there is no way of telling what the baby would have been like, why would parents spend money on the cloning? This question is impossible to answer fully without being placed in a similar situation.
In the future humans will be cloned, but it is not known how they will be treated. According to all of the biological aspects they will be living human beings, but it does not seem like humanity will treat them that way. Since it costs money to clone people it is logical to conclude that the people who pay for the clone will want some kind of return on their investment such as the use of their clone as a slave. Slaves are still a problem even in today's world. People in America often think that slavery disappeared after Lincoln abolished it. However, that is not the case; slavery has taken on a different form, although it is the same in principal. If human cloning is developed these clones could be used as slaves for life; they would not have an identity of their own. Therefore, slaves could be bought and used for whatever purpose the owner wanted. It is doubtful that they would even be able to get a citizenship from a country even if they were freed, because they could be mistaken for their cellular donor. Since clones would not be seen as humans, they could be beaten, killed, or forced into hard labor, and no one would see any problem with this. Although they may not have souls, they are still capable of the same emotions, and thoughts that other humans are. It is not hard to imagine cloning factories in third world countries that churn out clones to sell into prostitution, or bondage of some other kind. However cloning could be used in good ways such as "serving as a new, unusual but perhaps efficacious treatment for infertility" (McGee).
If humans are allowed to be cloned then doubtless these clones will bear their own children. The question is will these children have souls? Furthermore if a clone and a non-clone have a child will the child have a soul? These questions seem impossible to answer. Colin B. Donovan claims that if the processes, no matter how artificial and unnatural, result in a being that is materially human in makeup and can live and develop into a child, then that child will have a soul. The bible says the God knew each person that would be born, before the world was created. It is possible that God predestined clones to be formed as well. Sex and child birth is sacred in the eyes of God, and this fact leads to the conclusion that God does not want people to manipulate this process. Furthermore, God calls all people to inhabit the earth and subdue it. With this commandment God gave people the responsibility and permission to use animals as slaves. Many animals are slaves and yet because they have no soul and do not possess a high intelligence we do not consider them slaves. Is it only the soul that makes us human or is it just the ability to think logically? Mentally ill people do not have the ability of logical thought and yet people still consider them humans, and they have all the rights and more that other people possess. Therefore the ability does think logically is not the thing that makes us human. Clones do not have souls because they were not created by God as Adam and Eve were, but rather they were created by men.
It all comes down to the soul. Things of this earth are temporary but the soul is eternal. Clones do not have souls and so logically they could be used as slaves, just as humanity has used animals as their slaves. However this does not mean that they can be used for sex, or physically abused. The UShas laws that protect animals from abuse, and these laws would also be applied to clones.
Written by John Severin,
Digital Multimeter [http://digitalmultimeterhome.com]
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