Professors debate issues in cloning

The potential healing effects of human cloning could provide improvements in preventive health care, but the surrounding moral and ethical issues could prove to be equally devastating to society. This topic and other issues concerning cloning were debated by faculty members from the Department of Religious Studies during a panel discussion entitled "Playing God: Cloning a New World."\nTuesday night's panel was composed of IU professors David Smith, Jenny Girod, and Ann Mongoven. Brianne Williams, a senior member of the Undergraduate Religious Studies Association, organized the event, which was held at the Whittenberger Auditorium in the Indiana Memorial Union.\n"I brought up the idea of having this discussion at an URSA meeting last year," Williams said. "We wanted the chance to provide people with some education on the issues and ethics involved with cloning." \nSmith commenced the discussion with a brief speech about the difference between reproductive and therapeutic cloning. Smith said therapeutic cloning seeks to reproduce cells of a specific type, while the objective of reproductive cloning is to recreate another person. While Smith said both forms have been met with opposition, therapeutic cloning is the more evenly debated of the two.\n"Some feel that we have the obligation to preserve life, and that we must use available science to help heal people," Smith said. "But many others still feel that it demonstrates an unjustified killing of human life." \nAlthough the panel seemed to be in agreement in opposing the humanity of reproductive cloning, Smith said that many believe therapeutic cloning is just as inhumane.\n"There are many who feel that the cloned embryos involved with therapeutic cloning is as much a human being as a grown adult," he said. "But it's very unclear whether or not the embryo is an individual human being."\nAfter Smith finished, Mongoven took the microphone and shared her views on a person's desire to clone dead friends or family members. At the heart of her speech, Mongoven delivered a fictional scenario about a sterile man who was the only Holocaust survivor in his family and wanted to be cloned so that his family's name could continue after his death.\nBut after presenting the audience with this scenario, Mongoven was quick to express that cloning the dead cannot morally succeed in the case of this person or anyone else for that matter.\n"This cloned person may look like his forbearers, but he will be nothing like them because he never knew his family," Mongoven said. "Looking genetically like someone does not mean that they will be the same person, just look at identical twins."\nMongoven said that even if a person was aware of the impossibility of reproducing the dead, he or she would still find cloning as an appealing alternative to grieving.\n"Cloning is easier than grieving," Mongoven said. "But we should not clone the dead. We should grieve for our dead and thus love our dead."\nGirod, who was the last panelist to speak, discussed the impact cloning would have in society if it was permitted. She mentioned the beneficial potential cloning could have by improving the treatment of spinal cord injuries and other diseases. But Girod also discussed some of the societal setbacks cloning could ignite, such as the high expense of cloning research and the possibility of society immunity to suffering.\n"Cloning could have the potential to cure everything," Girod said. "And that could be harmful to society because we need to live in a society where people care about the suffering and well-being of others."\nAmong the near 100-member audience at the panel discussion was junior Zach Richer, who said he came to learn more about the controversial topic. Richer said he was especially compelled by Mongoven's scenario involving the Holocaust survivor.\n"I found her talk to be really interesting," Richer said. "I thought the scenarios in her speech really brought out the subtle humanitarian issues involved with cloning."\nThe panel members were all in agreement concerning the future of cloning. Towards the end of a question and answer session with the audience, each faculty member shared the belief that human cloning will eventually exist.\n"It's inevitable," Girod said. "The technology is out there and people are already claiming to have succeeded. It may take a long time, but it's going to happen"