When does a human life begin when we can clone?
Does a human life begin at conception or some time after?
I can see arguments for at conception, at birth, and some time between. I believe most people today would be horrified at it, but I think when infant mortality was higher, people wouldn’t consider a life viable until after a few days or even years. Various cultures have traditions that mark the beginning of life well after birth.
What if we can clone humans?
What if we could clone—that is, create a new human from any other human cell? If you believe life begins at viable cell, does that not make every human cell everywhere the equivalent of a fertilized egg?
Say we created a cloning machine. Would we not be obliged to create as many such machines as possible to bring as many otherwise lost cells as possible “to term”?
Would it be murder not to save every living cell we can? Should it not become society’s mission to make and operated these machines non-stop? Is not every living cell lost from the body, such as the millions when you get a cut, a potential human like a fertilized egg? If you mourn the loss of unborn children, would the existence of such a machine lead you to nonstop mourning at every human cell that dies outside the body?
I’m not taking a position
I’m not taking a position on when a human life begins, nor saying right, wrong, good, or bad. I’m just curious and pursuing the ramifications of technological developments. We changed our views on when life began when we lowered infant mortality to where I would guess past people would consider crazy. They probably would have gone crazy if they considered every child’s death as serious as an adult’s when more than half of kids died within the first year or two.
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