Posted on 06/19/2002 3:00:18 PM PDT by RJCogburn
MARINA DEL REY, CA—Congressional infighting has temporarily prevented a ban on human cloning—but to protect this life-saving technology permanently, we must recognize that it is moral, said Alex Epstein, a writer for the Ayn Rand Institute.
"Human cloning is a highly pro-life technology," said Epstein, "but the opponents of cloning perversely condemn it as anti-life." Senator Sam Brownback, the ban's sponsor, says cloning is "creating human life to destroy." President George Bush calls it "growing human beings for spare body parts." Congresswoman Sue Myrick smears it as the "most dangerous and ghoulish enterprise in human history."
The opponents of cloning know the life-saving potential of cloning, Epstein explained, but are unmoved "because their real objection is not that cloning is anti-life, but that it entails 'playing God'—i.e., man remaking nature to serve human purposes." But such a desire, Epstein insisted, "is not immoral—it is a mark of virtue. Using technology to alter nature is a requirement of human life. It is what brought man from the cave to civilization. Every advance in human history is produced by those who hold the premise that suffering and disease are a curse, not to be humbly accepted as 'God's will,' but to be fought proudly with all the power of man's rational mind."
"The individuals now developing human cloning technology," said Epstein, "do not deserve to be condemned and shackled by their government. Instead, they should be celebrated as the heroes they are."
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