The Lord Made Us Clone!

Certainly many people were scared out of their wits when they heard about the childless and desperate Kentucky couple, identified only as "Kathy" and "Bill," who in a CNN interview last week said that they were working with a noted genetic researcher, Dr. Panayiotis Zavos, to create a clone of Kathy?a babe in her own image. It may be the time of year when the sensational stories are rolled out, but this was for real, no matter how probable or improbable success might be. They're trying to clone humans! And I must admit it: I actually found the news deliciously ironic and, yes, a tad amusing. This, you see, is one of those times when that cultural monster called "family values" is suddenly in a battle with its own kind. It's like Godzilla vs. Mothra?and, serious as the topic may be, there's a certain guilty pleasure in taking cover and watching from the sidelines.

The news of the attempted cloning is ironic because the loudest and most hysterical arguments against cloning are the religious "family values" ones: it threatens the sanctity of human life, demeans conception between a man and a woman and, most egregiously, attacks the supposedly natural propagation of the traditional family as the Creator intended it. But now we have a couple who say they are in fact religious Christians in a loving, albeit unhappily barren, marriage. They aren't into cloning because of some Dr. Evil-like attempt to create a Mini-Me, at least not as they describe it. No, they're making a copy of Kathy, they say, because they've not been able to conceive a child on their own, have tried everything and believe divine destiny is guiding them. They want very much to be a part of that sacred traditional family, and they claim that adopting one of the many underprivileged (read: brown or black) kids out there who need homes just won't do: they say they must have a genetic offspring, just like other red-blooded white Christian Americans.

So, for Kathy and Bill, the argument in favor of cloning is as much about "family values" as the argument against cloning is for many others.

"I think that God really wants us to do this, that it is the next step," Kathy piously told CNN. "I can't imagine any other reason why we haven't had a child, other than this is what we were meant to do." (Oh, and the devout and moral Kathy and Bill, by the way, say they will abort any of their cloned fetuses that develop extra limbs or have missing organs or any other abnormality, problems that critics warn are inherent to cloning at this stage of the game.) Yes, it sounds like freaky Nazi stuff?genetic engineering with the force of God behind it. But hey, if Pat Robertson can believe that God made terrorists crash planes into the World Trade Center to punish us heathens?and if we all can believe, as our recently much-defended Pledge of Allegiance states, that we are "one nation under God"?then Kathy can believe the Big Guy wants her to clone herself. That's the slippery slope, after all, that God always gets us on, crafty as he is. (Personally, I, too, think God wants me to clone myself, but that's just me?and me.

Maybe Kathy's claim of divine guidance is the reason why most of the Christian-right groups that went ballistic last year over therapeutic cloning?charging that it was a foot in the door to reproductive cloning ?have been oddly silent about Kathy and Bill. Last November, groups such as Concerned Women for America, the American Family Association, Family Research Council and Focus on the Family fired off blistering press releases urging the Senate to ban cloning in all forms, and pressuring the President in that direction as well, no matter how much research into therapeutic cloning might help advance the fight against many diseases. The bilious Rev. James Dobson, Focus on the Family's founder, thundered on his radio show about the "dangers of cloning."

But now, here we have a case of reproductive cloning front and center and Dobson's group and most of the others haven't said a thing about it. Only Family Research Council sent out a release, but it didn't mention "Kathy" or "Bill," let alone criticize the nice, Christian, family-oriented couple. No, it attacked?who else??Democrats in the Senate!

"[T]he Democratically-controlled Senate still refuses to ban the procedure," the release stated. "As of today there is no federal law against cloning; and in America, what is not prohibited is permitted."

But that is completely irrelevant to this case, since Dr. Zavros, obviously no idiot, will be performing his cloning experiments far from this country, in undisclosed overseas clinics. (I can't help but conjure up scenes from that film classic of diabolical, out-of-control science, The Island of Dr. Moreau.) No American law against cloning can stop him from cloning Kathy, and unless a law is passed that would prevent Mini-Kathy and other clones from entering the country, cloned babies?if and when the experiments are ever successful?will be growing up in America. You'd think that, with the law useless in this case, the decent and moral Christian groups would be taking on Kathy and Bill directly, not to mention Dr. Zavos, for engaging in what they clearly believe is a crime against nature.

Without a doubt that would be the case if Kathy were a lesbian trying to clone herself in the hopes of raising a child, or if Kathy were a single heterosexual woman?or, perhaps, even a non-Christian. (Just imagine if Kathy were an atheist.) They would lambaste her from here to kingdom come. But it seems that even in these days of sensational media stories about abducted girls being raped and Catholic clergy molesting teenagers, the idea of a man wanting to create a child that will slowly become an exact replica of his wife?his bedmate and sex partner?isn't enough to make the fundamentalists flip. No, the pain and pleadings of a barren Christian couple yearning for a child and believing God wants them to create a clone appear to have thrown them into an eerie silence, at least for the moment.

It makes me realize that, no matter how long the tide is held against reproductive cloning, in the end even the most sensible and serious arguments against it won't stop it. Once perfected?however long that may take?cloning will become quite common, as it loses its "freaky science" patina and anchors itself within the traditional family. Because, in America, the traditional family trumps everything.

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