"JD" <spamless@spamless.org> wrote in message
news:b3r481thdsh8im3mbbnp63s30c3678udu3@4ax.com...

On Wed, 11 May 2005 14:45:15 -0500, Alan W. Craft
<mauritius4@hotmail.com> wrote:

On 11 May 2005 09:51:58 -0700, "herr blob" <fatsgrobnik@hotmail.com>
emanated:

The babies would have souls, and would end up in either
purgatory(then
heaven), or hell, according to how they led their lives, and just like
anyone else.

But how can you be sure that the catholic church would feel that way?
If the catholic church feels that souls are created at the moment of
conception, then would it still feel that a copy of an
already-conceived person would get a soul too?

If it were somehow possible to clone you solely from a bit of your
fingernail, or a snippet of your bone marrow... would the catholic
church still hold that the person grown from that bit of you had its
own, separate soul? If so, when would the catholic church believe the
clone acquired it?

If you chop off your finger, and keep it alive in a petri dish, does
the catholic church believe that it would acquire a soul?

Jon, I think you are confused about the process of cloning. It isn't as
though the person is completely regenerated from the sample of a toenail
or hair follicle. Rather, cloning requires the fertilization of an egg in
a scientific process. You take the egg and remove from it the nucleus.
You then use an electric current to replace the nucleus with an already
existing nucleus from a cell (such as that from a blood sample or other
source) and implant the new fertilized egg in the surrogate.

Human cloning would produce a child through sexual means. Egg removed
from surrogate mother. Cell removed from person to be cloned. The cell
is fused with an enucleated egg using electricity. The egg which is now
fused with the cell forms an active embryo. The embryo is implanted into
the surrogate mother and the baby is born. Will this child be an exact
copy of the original? No. Personality will be different, since it isn't
simply genetics that determine personality, but experiences as well.

The only difference will reside in maturation chambers (think borg) where
cloning occurs and the fetus develops rather quickly through a maturation
chamber (very sci fi). In that case, the clone produced will be the same
age as the adult donor, but would most likely experience extreme mental
handicaps (unless you can figure out some way to enforce an engramatic
copy, in which case the brain-matter would also be identical.

In the end, it is still wrong. It should be banned since it is unsafe.
The first cloned animal took 250 some odd tries to succeed, producing many
mentally deficient clones. It just isn't safe and it simply isn't moral.

The person, therefore, isn't necessarily grown from that bit of you, but
an exact copy of your zygote is made using a preexisting cell nucleus from
your body. There still is a moment of fertilization. It isn't within a
womb, but it still is a moment of fertilization.

-RS