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Asked by 08sbhatt to David, Luna, Mark, Melanie, Probash on 17 Mar 2011 in Categories: General.
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David Pyle answered on 13 Mar 2011:
I am going to assume that you mean ‘artificial human cloning’, as cloning is already fairly widespread in, for example, some areas of agriculture (plants).
I would be surprised if major religions would allow artificial human cloning. Not to say that it wouldn’t happen eventually, but just that I would expect religious organisations to use their influence (for example in public debate and so on) to make sure that the circumstances when cloning might or might not be allowed should be very thoroughly discussed, and a careful ‘rule sheet’ set up. Many religions have quite clear views, developed over many centuries and in many religious writings, about the idea of what it is to be human. Some sorts of artificial cloning would raise interesting tests of this idea which society would need to think about before allowing artificial cloning to proceed.
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Luna Munoz answered on 14 Mar 2011:
I don’t know. I’ve not read any religious works in a very long time.
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Melanie Stefan answered on 14 Mar 2011:
It depends on the religion, but probably not.
A big ethical concern is that cloning does not actually work very well – it took over two hundred failed attempts before cloning Dolly the sheep, i.e. the production of two hundred embryos that turned out to be severely flawed and died. Now, most religions would have a problem with that (especially if we are talking about human cloning), and rightly so!
If cloning technology was 100% efficient and accurate, i.e. if it always worked out at the first attempt, I think that would be a different issue. It would probably depend on the circumstances and the reasons for cloning. Some religions probably oppose any kind of medical intervention that helps create new life (also opposing, for instance, IVF), but for those that don’t, it is hard to imagine why they would oppose cloning.
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