To the Editor:
There is a pagan world view that sees human lives as simply cattle. This meat manager mentality never ceases to plague us with new and more perverse assaults on human dignity and societal ethics. The scientific arm of meat management is now trying to con us that there's a difference between a cloned human embryo intended for implantation ("reproductive" cloning) and one intended for cannibalization for its stem cells ("therapeutic" cloning). The overwhelming arrogance of these self-styled witch doctors and their "bio-ethicist" enablers is revealed in their assertion that the difference lies not in the nature of the embryonic entity but in their intended use of it.
So-called "bio-ethicists" want to define human value based on brain functions. But they have forgotten why the loss of brain waves first became accepted as a criterion of death. It was the irreversibility of the loss with existing medical technology that justified a pronouncement of death. However, brain waves and all other functions will be irreversibly present once conception (fertilization) has occurred, whether by natural or mechanical means in the lab. The same criterion of irreversibility of the onset or loss of brain functions can be used logically to mark the beginning or end of a human life.
"Bio-ethics" is rapidly becoming the black art of rationalizing the unconscionable. Let's at least lock the cloning genie in the bottle before we suffer new waves of ethical nightmares from which we may not recover without horrific social convulsions.
Sincerely,
Alfred Lemmo