Philosophical reflections on cloning

I wrote this a couple of years ago and thought I'd post it today. Have a great weekend.

Cloning: My View
The Friday after Christmas, the Raeleans (?) a group in Florida announced the birth of the first cloned Human Being. (Yeah, I seem to recall a few months later the whole thing was proven bogus) Now, supposedly intelligent people (by this I mean senators and scientists) are actually still claiming that cloned people aren't human beings. I have several thoughts on this.
First, Go read Friday by Heinlein. My mother was a test tube/my father was a knife. Is this what you want these poor cloned people the think when they grow up? Did they ask to be born? No.
I heard a senator the other day claim that cloned humans wouldn't have souls. This was just about the most preposterous thing I have ever heard. To begin with, if you believe in God, then God is (at least in Catholic and most Protestant religions with which I am familiar. I can't do a Muslim or Buddhist run down of this argument) omnipotent and omniscient and therefore, if he wants to give the child a soul he will. This is such a bizarre argument to have. To begin with, what is a soul ? I haven’t put any serious thought into this since my College philosophy major days, but lets say that a soul is that part of us that is self aware. Your selfness as it were. Now, lets not go off onto any of those tangents that pop up, like whether or not your dog is self aware (my dog feels shame, or at least acts like she does.), the brain in a vat being manipulated by the scientist to believe it is self aware, (do the rest of you even exist?) and so forth…. So this Selfness- is it intangible breathed into us by God or is it a product of the functioning of our brains- known as the Ghost in the machine theory? We can all pretty much agree that the Soul is either divinely given, or present at birth through the complex system that is our brain. Now with either of these two arguments, cloning does not lead to a soulless creature. The Physical theory—that our selfness is a product of our brain, doesn't seem to be the camp that has a problem with cloning per se as producing a human being.
I want to talk about the God given soul camp. This is the group that believes that God places his hand on each conception and puts a soul into each life. Now, you may wish to make some semantic argument about exactly how this happens, but this is basically the belief that without the touch of God, you have no soul. My question to you is who are you to say that God isn't’t taking care of this? God loves the little children and will not let them suffer. Anyway, this argument will be answered in a year or two when the cloned child can speak- it will become obvious that this child has a self just like any other person.
But somehow, this argument has gotten in the way of the bigger discussion. The Ethics of cloning. Under what circumstances should another person be cloned? Is it ethical for a group, a corporation, to own your DNA? Can you sell your DNA? Because we’re so busy politicizing this situation no one has even gotten to: What rights does a cloned person have? Apparently several senators are pretty sure a cloned person is not a human being- does this mean that she or he has no rights? Since her DNA, I am pretty sure, is registered as being owned by someone, is she a citizen? Descartes said, I think therefore I am. My catechism said, "How do I know I exist? Because I can think about God and the world to come." She going to know she exists, but will existence and humanness be forever separated?
I can’t tell you exactly what it takes to be a chair, but I know one when I see it. I can’t tell you exactly what porn is, nor am I sure any more that I know it when I see it, because its damn near everywhere and that’s cultural. But I can tell you that a child, whether born, cloned, and/or decanted is a person, has a "soul" and should be a citizen.


I also, in case you're not clear on this, think cloning and genetic research on humans is one of the most important areas of scientific study there is. Lets just stick with the cloning of animals and body parts until we are comfortable with the ethical results/decisions that are inherent with cloning a human being.