Calvin Synod Herald, 1999 (99. évfolyam, 2-4. szám - 100. évfolyam, 9-12. szám)
1999-03-01 / 2. szám
CALVIN SYNOD HERALD- U -AMERIKAI MAGYAR REFORMÁTUSOK LAPJA “A Letter on Cloning” A Response to Our Article by Rev. William D. Bonis, M.Th., Ph.D., Pastor & University Professor in California Having read your brief comments on “Science and Technology” in the Calvin Synod Herald’s March-April, 1998 issue, pages 3, 7, and 11,1 am glad that you have tried to reflect on the thorny issue of cloning. Of course, limitations of space (and sticking close to our religious tradition) did not allow more analysis. I’d like to tackle the deeper and intricate problematic. Some thinkers hold that cloning humans is wrong in and of itself (intrinsically wrong), i.e., it would be wrong under any conceivable circumstances. On the other hand, many hold that human cloning would be wrong in some, perhaps most, circumstances, but not in others that could be imagined. Although there are numerous variations, a number of Protestant and Jewish thinkers, along with many secular thinkers, take this second position and worry about inappropriate uses or abuses of human cloning rather than about every single use. Several scenarios can be considered - cloning to provide a compatible source of biological material such as bone marrow, for treatment; cloning and a dying child; cloning to prevent genetic diseases. In any event, some religious and secular positions that accept some possible cases of human cloning, presuppose that the procedure is sufficiently safe for the child created by cloning and that the child’s rights and interests will be adequately protected. Otherwise human cloning even for legitimate purposes would be morally unjustifiable. Those who reject all human cloning as immoral tend to favor a permanent legislative ban. The National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC) advised the President to seek a temporary ban on cloning humans. I don’t have time to describe the nature, scope and limits of that ban or to identify its rationale. I just want to point out that some people were surprised that NBAC solicited religious perspectives along with expected philosophical perspectives. However, attention to religious perspectives is not unprecedented in debates about public policies for new technologies - for instance, the President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Biomedical and Behavioral Research included religious perspectives when it examined genetic engineering. While recognizing that public policy in the USA cannot be based on considerations that are purely religious in nature, NBAC believed that it was important to examine religious as well as philosophical perspectives on human cloning for several reasons. I used to teach for 15 years an interdisciplinary course in molecular biology and ethics at the State University of California Long Beach (the first part was taken up by professor in molecular biology) and along with Kantian, utilitarian and Rawlsian ethics, I treated religious positions, too. Religious traditions often present moral arguments that rest on premises that are not merely or exclusively religious in nature. For instance, they may invoke categories such as “nature” or “basic human values” or “family values” that are not reducible to particular faith commitments and that are accessible to citizens of different or no faith commitments. Just a question to complicate issues: a child created through somatic cell nuclear transfer cloning; would he/she still be created in the image of God? It is important to make this point because so many commentators on religious perspectives miss or neglect it. Of course, religious and secular thinkers alike insist that it is morally obligatory not to inflict serious harms on children created through human cloning. On such harm is physical. At least for now, cloners could not be sure that they would not be doing unacceptable harm to children. Safety is a fundamental ethical issue. Too, would it not be difficult for cloned persons to establish their own identity and for their creators to acknowledge and respect it? Well, I must close. I just wonder how many of our fellow Hungarian ministers are concerned with studying the “man of the future” or “the future of man” in a technological society so much dependent on science? Or reflecting on it with deep and sharp theological thinking, examining intelligently pro’s and con’s alike. I myself will do just that when to medical students in the English section of Semmelweis Medical School in Budapest next September - as I did on other topics in the past few years. Today, I went to hear a most interesting lecture on “What Chimpanzees Have Taught Me About Who We Are” by Dr. Roger and Debbie Fouts, internationally renowned scholars in the field of primate communications and primate behavior in our University. Interestingly, Roger Fouts is also an ordained Lutheran minister. The National Geographical featured them a number of times and perhaps you had opportunity to see them on TV, too. Closing my communications, and sending my prayerful best wishes for health, continued scholarship and Christian witness, I remain yours cordially, Bela Bonis The Ecumenical Council of the Churches in Hungary held its regular annual assembly. Based on the Report of the President and the General Secretary, the work pursued during the last seven years was reviewed. Acknowledgments were expressed to Dr. Béla Harmati, bishop of the Lutheran church, the resigning president, and the Dr. Zoltán Bóna, reformed pastor, the resigning secretary, for the work performed in the last two cycles. The new president was elected in the person of Dr. Mihály Márkus, reformed bishop of Transdanubia, and the elected secretary is Dr. Tibor Görög, Lutheran pastor.
