WRITER_ U284525
Answer the Discussion Questions: Week 9: Assigned Discussion Question — Cloning, Being a Person, Stem Cell Research, and the Bible using your own ideas but also incorporating (or at least not ignoring) any articles or material you choose from the textbook that is especially and reasonably relevant.
If you do use or refer to something from the book (or anywhere) as you should, because not everyone will read what you do, you have to explicitly state, explain, and support any material you use. Do not just quote something from your sources (and particularly not out of context). With each of you choosing what you want to read, I expect you all to bring different ideas from the book to the discussion.
Answer both A and B. Question A is more about the concept of what makes two things the same thing or not, and particularly the same person or not than it is about the moral concepts that seem to be involved. Many students have said that murder is wrong, but what if you are not murdering someone by simply deleting one of the forms of them? Question B is just about whether one can consistently hold that the Bible (and particularly) Christianity make it wrong to sacrifice children for the greater good of all, especially if one also believes that war is justified. Give evidence and reasons for your answers to the following:
A) Suppose that we could clone you as an adult — instantly reproducing you whole, intact with memories and everything so that at the moment of formation of the clone, you and your clone are totally identical in all ways. Would it be okay to destroy you, now that your exact duplicate can go on with your life? How about destroying him/her? It is my view that the way the transporter worked on Star Trek was not to transport you anywhere, but to reproduce you at the destination while then destroying the original, and no one seemed to mind that, because they thought they were being teleported. It is just like radio, tv, and phones, which don’t transport anything anywhere; they simply recreate the sounds and images fed into them. You never hear your friends’ voices over the phone; you hear a reproduction of their voice, created from analog or digital signals. So it seems reasonable that if a teleporter is ever developed, it will operate on the same principle. Is it okay then to destroy the original once the copy is created and confirmed? Why or why not? Also, no one minded that people being teleported were disintegrated and then recreated, whereas in my scenario you will be recreated and then disintegrated — mine is a safer process since we confirm the recreation before disintegrating the original. On Star Trek, periodically the teleportation process went awry and the person was lost in transmission; but my way prevents that.
Would it be okay if the clone is intimate with your spouse, whether you are destroyed or not? (Assume you still love your spouse in answering this question.) Why or why not?
For those of you not familiar with Star Trek or who have trouble imagining this whole process, let me state it a different way: You are walking down the street one day, when suddenly you split into two identical “you”, and both are the continuation of the “you” from a second earlier, just as the real individual “you” now is the continuation of the you a second ago. It is not that one is a copy and the other the original, it is simply that you have split into two. Now imagine this happens periodically to us, but each time it does, one of the bodies just vaporizes immediately, and the other one goes on just as you do now (because you don’t notice this process happening). Would you not say that the one that continues on is still “you”? But suppose further now, that instead of you splitting into two right there in the same place, one of the bodies is created in some distant city where you need to go for a business trip, or it is created in Disneyworld or Paris, France where you always wanted to go. If the body that is created with it in the same place is now vaporized, isn’t the one in the other city just you by yourself now? So would it be okay if it comes back home and is intimate with your spouse, etc. Would it be okay to vaporize it immediately if it didn’t vaporize spontaneously? Explain and justify your answers.
The point of the above: there are both pro and con arguments about real scientific cloning that presume clones will be the same person as the parent. The pro side says it will be great that people will be able to make multiples of themselves; the con side says that would be terrible. But is the presumption even true? What would be required for a clone to be the same person as the parent? The scenario above is meant to help you have some insight into that because in that fictitious scenario the clone is a perfect replica in all ways of the original. What would make it be or not be the same person then? What about less perfect replicas, as in real scientific cloning?
B) Many conservative Christians are opposed to stem cell research and to reproduction techniques that do not involve sex between a wife and her husband. They oppose stem cell research on the grounds that one human being should not be sacrificed for others, no matter how much good it might do. However, in John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” it would appear that God thinks sacrifice of a child for the benefit of others is right. Moreover, many of these same people are conservative in regard to national defense and believe it is honorable and admirable for someone to be sacrificed as a soldier in war, even when the war may not do all that much good. And in Genesis 2:22 “Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man” Eve was not created by sex, nor was Adam. So even though people can procreate by means of sex, that does not seem to mean they have to procreate by that means alone, or does it? Now remember, this is not a question about what God thinks is right or about the truth of the Bible. It is not even about whether stem cell research is acceptable or not or whether it is okay to sacrifice one person’s life for the potential good of many. This is simply a question about whether there is any Biblical reason to oppose stem cell research or non-sexual methods of reproduction, including cloning.
I do not have this book
The Required Textbook is DOING ETHICS By Lewis Vaughn. It is an excellent book with many good articles. I will also supply free supplementary material. You can use the 4th, 5th, or 6th (eText) edition:
DOING ETHICS
By Lewis Vaughn.
EDITION: 4th, 5th, or 6th (eText)
DoingEthics4thEdition.jpg
4th Edition
5thEditionDoingEthics.jpg
5th Edition
6thEditionDoingEthics.jpg
6th Edition (eText)
PUBLISHER: NORTON
ISBN of 4th edition: 9780393265415
ISBN of 5th edition: 978-0-393-64026-7
ISBN of 6th edition (eText): 9780393885903
