Wesley Smith and Cloning

My favorite bioethicist, Wesley Smith said this about human cloning in his prescient book: A Consumer’s Guide to A Brave New World:

We can pursue biotechnology to treat disease and improve the human condition, while retaining sufficient humility and self-restraint to keep ourselves from endangering the intrinsic value of human life. Or, we can hubristically rush onto the very anti-human path warned against by Aldous Huxley, driven by our thirst for knowledge, vast profits, and obsession with control and vastly expanded life spans.

These issues are too important to be “left to the scientists.” Nor can we afford to allow the marketplace to determine what is right and what is wrong. The stakes are too high, the potential impact on each and every one of us too profound, to remain passive and indifferent to the decisions that are to be made. It is our duty to participate in the crucial cultural and democratic debates over biotechnology. The human future, quite literally, depends on it.

Prophetic and poignant – and DEAD RIGHT!!

The Archbishop of Denver Speaks Out: Cloning Kills the Smallest Among Us and the Next Victims WIll be Us

Samuel Aquila is archbishop of the Archdiocese of Denver, Colorado and has weighed in with regards to the cloning of human embryos. I am not a Roman Catholic, and Fr. Aquila is not a person whose religious authority I am obligated to accept de fide. Nevertheless, his stance on this subject is reasoned and was published on the National Review Online website here. It is well worth reading.