Human Cloning: A Temptation to Avoid

Morally evil and socially dangerous, human cloning devalues human lifeby removing a child's God-given uniqueness.

A Statement from The Office of the President
The Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod
1333 South Kirkwood Road
St. Louis, Missouri 63122
United States of America

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St. Louis, March 7, 2001--First a sheep, then a pig, then a monkey. Now a human being? In this still-new millennium, our efforts should be directed toward improving, protecting and cherishing human life, not trying to manufacture it in the laboratory.

Cloning human life is troubling for many reasons--most importantly because it is contrary to the Word of God, which teaches that a child is given to a husband and wife as a blessing from Him. Cloning is not merely another "reproductive choice" for infertile couples and others. It is a moral evil and grave social danger. It devalues human life by removing one of the most important things that make us human: our God-given uniqueness.

When a child is cloned, he or she is made not through the loving, personal union of a committed husband and wife. Rather, the clone is made through a process by which one person's genetic materials are injected mechanically into a host egg, thus producing, in effect, a copy of another human being. Because a clone is biologically related to only one person, couples must decide which of them will generate the "better" set of characteristics--looks, intelligence, athletic ability, etc.--to bestow on the clone.

And the clone, of course, will not be "their" child. Rather, genetically speaking, it will be the identical twin of one of them--the person who donated the genetic material used for the cloning. Far from being a new and unique creation like other children, the clone will be that person's "duplicate."

What sort of identity is this to give to any child? God makes us--each and every one of us--in His own image. It is not His plan that we should create ourselves in our own. Our goal should be to become ever-more fully human, ever-more fully conformed to His image. Not less.

In the Bible (Genesis 1 and 2), God tells us that a child is begotten, not made. The begetting of new human life is best accomplished in the context God intends--in the loving relationship between a husband and wife. It is they, not a laboratory and a dish of donated cells, who are given the joy and blessing of being parents who love and nurture their child.

Clearly, human cloning is a temptation to avoid. Instead of trying to play God or become like Him, we should receive children as a gift from the Lord, who sent His Son, Jesus Christ, so that we might have life, and have it more abundantly.