Cloning & Souls

[TN_Vixen]

I don't know how I'm under the perception that we are infused with a soul by God before birth, but I am. At least I recognize that I have no basis for this belief, hm? So I was thinking about cloning last night while watching Ally McBeal and thought... how would these people they make have souls? It really wouldn't be a Godly creation would it? And if the person has the same genetic makeup wouldn't there already be a soul for the initial genetically made person?

That brought my best friend and I into a discussion about who actually has a soul anyway? Do animals? And why/why not?

 

[rambling man]

I believe some animals have souls, especially when you hear about some dog who dragged a kid out of a fire somewhere

I believe people have souls no matter how they are made so far. I cannot speak for cloning, though. I doubt that anyone they clone will be dveloped enough to say whether they have one or not. Most animal clones die very quickly or have horrifying defects in the mind, body, or both. It is reprehensible to clone a human when they cannot even clone an animal without srrious problems.

Do they have a soul? It's hard to tell. I suppose we will find out...The only guide I have is that scientists can replicate the initial conditions in which they say life began to a T but cannot make life begin. I still think it requires the hand of God. My opinion for what it is worth is that we will find to our horror that only rthe hand of God can be involved in the creation of fully functioning life as well

 

[Doulton]

I'm not quite sure what you are refering to by cloning. As far as I know, no one has ever cloned a human being. But even if they did, it wouldn't be the nightmare most people imagine. All cloning does is create an embryo with identical DNA, something which nature does itself: Identical twins are clones. The idea of someone walking into a machine and coming out with an exact replica of their adult selves is absolute fantasy. Science cannot create anything more sinister than identical twins. They still need to grow the embryos inside a woman's womb. Personally, I don't believe in souls, but if they were real, I don't think there would be any great issue surrounding clones. They would each get a soul of their own just as identical twins have seperate souls (I presume )

 

[rambling man]

An Italian scientist is taking 200 volunteers to begin a cloning program

Animal cloners are first to protest this action because of their overwhelming lack of success. No animal clone has survived and most have the most grotesque deformities

No matter whether you believe in a soul or not, you have to agree that if the human clone will be a deformed and suffering creature you should not do it

 

[WriterDom]

If you believe in reincarnation, you have a different idea of the soul. Most of your time is spent in the spiritual realm. When you do decide to incarnate, and that is your decision, you don't jump right in when the sperm enters the egg but at the time of birth. There is little to be gained from floating around in your mother's belly for 9 months. And I think it's possible for the soul to visit the other side in the first years or so. Some people say that is why babies twitch violently for no reason.

If the process was perfected, I see no reason why a soul wouldn't enter a clone.
And can you imagine a heaven without pets?

 

[rambling man]

I still don't understand all of it, but here is a story about idiots trying to clone people

They were just looking at his cells'
Hunt says there was no cloning attempted at Nitro Community Center
Tuesday August 7, 2001

By Tara Tuckwiller
Staff Writer


NOBODY in Nitro knew. Toddlers played in day care downstairs, senior citizens lunched in the cafeteria, the entire Nitro Police Department worked out of the same building ...

And all the while, upstairs in Room 201 of the former small-town high school building, a French woman and her male assistant worked to clone a local politician's dead baby.

Mark Hunt didn't tell his secret. Hunt, a Charleston lawyer whom Kanawha County voters elected three times to the state House of Delegates, rented the space in the Nitro Community Center for $347.58 a month. On the lease, he said his purpose was a "Research Venture."

Hunt paid the chemist, Brigitte Boisselier - who is also a bishop in a UFO cult - $5,000 a month to work on the first human clone, that of his 10-month-old son Andrew, who died after surgery for a heart defect. He spent nearly $500,000 all told, he said, and he'll spend more if he gets the chance.

Now, Hunt has told his secret - four months after federal officials started investigating the lab. He told - five days after the U.S. House of Representatives voted to make human cloning a crime.

The people of Nitro found out when they picked up their Sunday papers.

"I've got two sets of parents out front - in fact, they're still there - saying they don't want to bring their children to the day care," Greg Casto, director of the Nitro Community Center, told Hunt during a phone conversation Monday.

Hunt had called Casto, who was upset that a London Times reporter had told The Charleston Gazette that Casto knew the lab was for human cloning. Casto said he didn't, a fact that Hunt confirmed several times during the conversation.

Hunt gave Casto permission to share the contents of the conversation with news media, to clear Casto's name. Casto is a longtime Nitro resident and champion powerlifter. Hunt has said he will not talk to reporters.

"Remember, I asked you if there would be any gases, any chemicals or anything like that," Casto said to Hunt. "Of course, I never considered human cloning.

"For public safety, I've got to ask you to get this stuff out of here."

Hunt said he will remove the equipment from the now-closed lab as soon as he can find "a safe, dry place" to store it.

Casto asked Hunt: "So, I can just tell people the lab is closed? She [Boisselier] hasn't even been here in a while, has she?"

Hunt replied: "I would say certainly not through the month of July, probably the beginning of June ...

"Between you and me, that's the reason I let them go. Because they weren't doing anything. They weren't working. What I wanted them to do was look at the DNA of my son Andrew, to see if it was viable or not. They weren't doing it."

Casto couldn't get into the locked lab Monday morning to make sure it contained nothing dangerous, because only Hunt and his law partner, Tony Serreno, have keys.

"Is there anything in the refrigerator?" Casto asked Hunt. "Any cow ...?" He trailed off. Hunt had stated in the Sunday article that cow eggs were being used in the lab.

Hunt replied that the refrigerator contained only a medium used to keep DNA alive. He said no actual cloning was ever supposed to happen in the Nitro lab. The scientists were only supposed to study Andrew's DNA there, to see if they could successfully clone him.

"If there's a way down the road to create a twin of my child, I'm going to do it," he told Casto. "I'll spend all my money. ... If I can bring my son home, I'm going to do it. But I'm not going to do it in Nitro. Never intended to. They were just looking at his cells.

"I think it'll all blow over in a couple of days."

The lab

The story had everything: A politician, a cult, human cloning. It would be understandable if it was on the lips of everyone in Nitro Monday afternoon.

It wasn't.

"I don't think they know about it," said Frances Erlewine, who came to the Nitro Community Center for senior citizens' lunch with her husband, Casey, as usual.

The Erlewines had read it in the Sunday paper. They did not appreciate being kept in the dark about the lab.

"You have the Police Department in this building, and the seniors, and all these little babies," Frances Erlewine said. "And they said there could have been a bombing."

Upstairs from the cafeteria where the Erlewines eat lunch - past the old high-school lockers, and classrooms-turned-offices rented to more ordinary businesses - there's a locked classroom door with a little glass window.

Through the window, you can see Boisselier's lab. Even to the untrained eye, it hardly looks like it cost $500,000 to set up.

The walls are decorated with huge blown-up photos of egg cells, either human or animal. In front of the blackboard, there's a desk, much like a teacher's desk, with a computer and printer and scanner. Then there are two chemistry lab tables, with the sinks everyone remembers from high school.

On one table, the sink holds a bar of soap. The rest of the table is occupied by a scale, a Brita pitcher full of clear liquid and one piece of equipment the size of a microwave oven. On top of the machine rests what appears to be a box of rubber gloves - "Evolution One" brand.

On the other table, the sink holds a big bottle of Palmolive and a roll of paper towels. The equipment on that table is an incubator, which Hunt told Casto "burned up the first time we plugged it in."

Boisselier is being investigated by a federal grand jury in Syracuse, N.Y., the Syracuse Post-Standard reported Monday. She is accused of bilking investors by promising to clone their loved ones.

The investigation started several months ago, after Boisselier told Congress that her laboratory was on the verge of cloning a human, the Post-Standard reported. Federal investigators who inspected her lab concluded that she was years away from such a feat, and then started investigating her for false promises.

Hunt told Casto that a U.S. Food and Drug Administration official confronted him about the lab in March.

"He looked at the lab and said, ‘Well, you're not doing anything here, are you?'" Hunt told Casto.

Serving the desperate?

Information on Clonaid, Boisselier's cloning organization that set up shop in Nitro, has thus far been gleaned from its Web site.

Boisselier could not be reached for comment Monday. The Clonaid Web site listed no physical address - only a digital cell phone number in Las Vegas for public relations employee Nadine Gary. Gary referred questions to Boisselier, who she said was attending a conference on human cloning.

The Clonaid site does offer brief explanations of the services it sells:

Clonaid: For as little as $200,000, Clonaid will clone a person - you, your child, whomever - as soon as its scientists figure out how. Especially targeted "to wealthy parents worldwide ... After the first success, it is likely that the next clients on the list will be chosen according to their bid (for financial priority reasons) so that the money collected will help improve the technique from which everyone will benefit in the end."

Ovulaid: "The right to choose the appearance of your future baby! ... Come and return to your country pregnant with the child of your dreams!" Women can sell their eggs for $5,000, and other women can flip through catalogs full of pictures of the donors, then buy the eggs for "as low as $5,000 (plus transplantation fee)."

Clonapet: Coming soon: "The cloning of pets to wealthy individuals who wish to see their lost pet brought back to life." Also available for owners who want to resurrect dead racehorses.

Insuraclone: For $50,000, get anyone's DNA cryogenically frozen until science can cure whatever killed them.

The Clonaid site offers a link to the Raelian Movement, the religion of which Boisselier is a bishop. The movement was founded by a former French racecar driver who claims that life on Earth was created by extraterrestrials called Elohim, who also resurrected Jesus Christ by cloning him.

The Clonaid site also offers a link to a letter allegedly written by Hunt. It is addressed to James C. Greenwood, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Oversights and Investigations.

"Who am I and why do I support human cloning?" the letter begins. "I am a successful attorney, a former state legislator, a current elected official, a husband, a son, a brother, but most importantly, I am a father."

The letter reveals that the writer, at age 38, was "blessed with a perfect baby boy," that the boy grew to recognize his father and call him "Dada," that he and his wife were told their son had a 94 percent chance of making it through his heart surgery, and that the writer spared no expense in trying to find a way to bring his son back.

"I must withhold my identity until after the project is successful," the letter concludes. "However, our commitment to human cloning and to duplicating our child is unlimited, whether in the United States or abroad; we will never quit or give up on our child.

"Hopefully one day we can all celebrate our family and friends, my wife and our son, Dr. Brigitte and the brave new world."

The letter is signed, "A father. Dada."

To contact staff writer Tara Tuckwiller, use e-mail or call 348-5189.


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© Copyright 2001 The Charleston Gazette

 

[Guest]

I agree with Rambling Man...

 

[Doulton]

Animal cloners are first to protest this action because of their overwhelming lack of success. No animal clone has survived and most have the most grotesque deformities

That's just not true

"Scientists are building the world's first clone farm. A researcher from the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, which created Dolly the sheep, has moved to New Zealand to help build up a 1,500-strong herd of genetically engineered cows.

The cows, intended to produce medicines in their milk, will mark the first attempt to use cloning in commercial agriculture. Eventually clone farms could be set up throughout the world to help combat diseases including multiple sclerosis and cystic fibrosis. "

For the full story, go here: http://www.rense.com/ufo6/clonefarm.htm

Again, I want to reaffirm that cloning is not the evil beast it is made out to be on TV and movies. Sure, it can be abused, but it could also hold the key to vital health research and medical cures.
I think anyone who is sickened by the idea of it probably has an unrealistic view of it.

 

[rambling man]

the sheep cloners were the ones who spoke against it


I think there are legitimate ethical concerns about cloning a human being...the tendency of scientists to go and do things to prove it can be done without looking at the potential consequences has been the terrible legacy of twentieth century science

 

[Doulton]

I think there are concerns too, but that doesn't mean people should be against the idea entirely. I think most people are against it for the wrong reasons.

 

[shadowsource]

.

 

[Tabby432]

I think that mankind has become so self-involved and self-centered to believe that we are WORTH being cloned.

I think mankind will do anything for a buck. That's what this boils down to. Money.