"Therapeutic" Human Cloning
By Verdell Goulding

Therapeutic. It has a nice ring to it. It sounds commendable, beneficial, perhaps even necessary.

Human cloning by any other name, however, is still human cloning. Despite the respectable name, the only difference between reproductive cloning and therapeutic cloning is what happens to the embryo after it is created.

Both types of cloning seem to "play God" by creating human life through an unnatural process. With reproductive cloning, this created life would theoretically (i.e. if the process could be perfected) be allowed to develop, be born, live and grow in much the same way as all of us. With therapeutic cloning, however, scientists first "play God" by creating life, then subsequently destroy this same life in the course of their research.

Many feel reproductive cloning should be banned yet still advocate for therapeutic cloning. However, as pointed out by the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity, this would result in the unprecedented situation where it would actually be a crime not to destroy human life at some point along the developmental continuum.

This would be a disturbing paradox of justice. From this perspective therapeutic cloning may be considered even more unethical than reproductive cloning, not vice versa as many scientists proclaim.

Viewed in this light, therapeutic cloning no longer seems quite so.therapeutic.