Column: Cloning plans lack regard for value of individual
Published 12:00 am Thursday, January 9, 2003
Why in the name of all that’s holy would anyone want to be cloned? Can you imagine any woman going to a party and dancing tippy-toe with joy when she finds a couple of other women wearing a dress just like the one she’s wearing?
I remember reading some woman’s autobiography once years ago in which the writer, a minister’s daughter, said she never knew exactly what a soul was. She said she always thought of it as being rather round and grey and looking a bit like an oyster.
I’ve always believed that when people speak of souls as if they existed in the plural that they were speaking of individualities. After all, if no two snowflakes are alike, it stands to reason that no two people are alike. What could be more cruel than to create a being with no individuality of its own?
Remember that verse in the New Testament, &uot;What doth it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?&uot; That individuality, that divine spark that sets one person apart from all others, seems to me as great a gift as life itself.
There are those who say they want to be cloned in order to be immortal. Tn my opinion they are confused about immortality. To be immortal isn’t to live forever, it’s to advance spiritually to such a degree as to recognize life as eternal.
In his &uot;Power of the Myth,&uot; Joseph Campbell tells a story of the infant Buddah walking across a cloth of gold. He gestures toward the sky, toward the ground, toward the east, west, north and south, and with each gesture makes the statement, &uot;There is no one there like me.&uot;
The point is made that every single baby born into the world could make exactly the same statement, because each one is unique.
I can understand the possible value of therapeutic cloning but the cloning of animals and people is as hideous as the experiment of Dr. Frankenstein in Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s story.
Back in my Sunday School days, I confessed to my teacher my fear that I was never going to be able to love my enemies. My friends, yes, but enemies? I didn’t even like them. She gave me an answer, bless her, that still stands me in good stead.
She said that the word &uot;love&uot; had many meanings and that one of them was &uot;respect.&uot; She pointed out that every person I would meet in my life was here for a purpose and, therefore, entitled to my respect.
To create creatures without individualities just to prove that it can be done, seems to me to hold life as of little value, to lack respect for it. In short, to put again into practice that evil that prompts every murder, every rape, every act of violence and war, itself.
The depth of a person’s religion can be measured not by his church attendance, but by his attitude toward his fellow living creatures.
Love Cruikshank is an Albert Lea resident. Her column appears Thursdays.