. The very real possibility of human cloning is a problem that confronts human society on many different levels - including the religious, ethical, psychological and sociological areas. One of the biggest problems that cloning presents is the disruption and even the destruction of human institutions such as the family and parenting. On a different level, cloning is a threat to religious perceptions and challenges the very meaning of what it is to be a human being.

The ethical dilemma posed by cloning is extremely serious. As many experts point out, the idea of cloning and creating genetic duplicates of human beings places the entire concept of what it means to human at stake. From a religious point of view this is tantamount to saying that man can create himself instead of God, which undermines the foundations of many of the wor

We worry that the market for women's eggs that would be created by this research will provide unethical incentives for women to undergo health-threatening hormone treatment and surgery. We are also concerned about the increasing bio-industrialization of life by the scientific community and life science companies; we are shocked and dismayed that clonal human embryos have been patented and declared to be human "inventions." We oppose efforts to reduce human life and its various parts and processes to the status of mere research tools, manufactured products, and utilities.

The reason most people have an almost instinctual revulsion to cloning is that deep down, they sense that it signals the beginning of a new journey where the "gift of life" is steadily marginalized and eventually abandoned all together. In its place the new progeny becomes the ultimate shopping experience--designed in advance, produced to specification, and purchased in the biological marketplace. Cloning is, first and foremost, an act of "production," not creation. Using the new biotechnologies, a living being is produced with the same degree of engineering as we have come to expect on an assembly line. When we think of engineering standards, what immediately comes to mind is quality controls and predictable outcomes. That's exactly what cloning a human being is all about.

We are also concerned about the slippery slope advocates of embryo cloning have started down. If using a twelve-day-old cloned embryo for producing cells and tissues is morally acceptable, what would preclude advocates in the future from championing the harvesting of more developed cells from, say, an eight-week-old embryo, or from harvesting organs from a five-month-old cloned fetus if it were found to be a more useful medical therapy? One doesn't have to be a right-to-lifer to feel squeamish about harvesting organs from a second-trimester fetus.

...the new technologies of human reproduction (babies without sex) and their confounding of normal kin relationships (who is the mother: the egg donor, the surrogate who carries and delivers, or the one who rears?) would undermine the justification and support that biological parenthood gives to the monogamous marriage."

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1592
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)