Physician Heal Thy Self: Therapeutic Cloning, Stem Cell Research and the Silence of the Church
by John Chane

"Great things are they that you have done 0 Lord my God! How great your wonders and your plans for us! There is none that can be compared with you. Oh that I could make them known and tell them! But they are more than I can count." (Psalm 40, v.5-6)

This selection from Psalm 40 came to mind the other day as I was reading an article in the New York Times entitled, "Science Academy Supports Cloning to Treat Disease." (January 19, 2002)

The National Academy of Sciences recently came out with a report favoring "research cloning" while also strongly opposing "reproductive cloning." So what is the difference between "research cloning" and "reproductive cloning?" The Academy stated that there is a significant difference between trying to produce a human being through cloning and trying to seek cures for a myriad of human illnesses, diseases and debilitating physical conditions through the same basic cloning technologies. The report of the Academy of Sciences finds itself in direct opposition with the President of the United States and religious groups including the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and broad representations of the "Religious Right."

In cloning, or nuclear transplantation, the nucleus of a woman’s egg is removed and replaced with the nucleus of another cell, most often a human skin cell taken from an adult. What then becomes the reconstructed egg is given an electrical charge, causing the egg to divide. In the terminology of "reproductive cloning" the new, reconstructed embryo would be implanted into a woman’s womb and would ultimately grow into a fetus. This process was condemned by the National Academy of Sciences, but subject to open review every five years.

In "research cloning" the newly reconstructed embryo could be used to harvest stem cells, highly specialized in nature that could then be used for research and for the subsequent treatment of a plethora of human diseases and conditions that maim, cripple and more often than not destroy the quality of life of the afflicted person. The National Academy of Sciences supports this research. Those who oppose it do so on the basis that in order to extract stem cells, the embryos are destroyed and thus the issue of "when does life actually begin" raises its debatable head. The President’s Press Secretary, Ari Fleischer, responding to questions about the President’s opposition to any form of cloning said; "the President looks at these issues from a scientific and moral standpoint."

The [President’s Bioethics] Council is made up of legal and ethical scholars, scientists, physicians, and a journalist who is also a psychiatrist, but it appears that there is no solid theological/religious presence on the Council. I find this rather strange and quite troubling when issues of morality and ethics are used as the common denominator for any decision-making.

At the same time as the White House was responding to the whole issue of cloning, the President’s Bioethics Council was also studying the issue. Strangely, the council is made up of legal and ethical scholars, scientists, physicians, and a journalist who is also a psychiatrist, but it appears that there is no solid theological/religious presence on the Council. I find this rather strange and quite troubling when issues of morality and ethics are used as the common denominator for any decision-making.

Psalm 40 is a reminder that our vision of what is and what will become is limited by the basic conscious awareness of our humanity. It is God who’s in charge here, not us, and to presume to speak the ultimate truth of God when there is merit on both sides of a complex issue is problematic. It is all well and good to sight constraints and controls on human behavior or in this case, scientific research, but the question must be raised given the plurality of religions and religious beliefs is, "whose ethics and whose morality shall we apply in cases such as these?"

I recall seeing a bumper sticker many years ago in Boston that was authored by the Boston Women’s Health Collective. The bumper sticker was jarring, to say the least, but it got one’s attention regarding a prickly subject. It got me to thinking! It read; "If men became pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament." The reference to sacrament was directed to the position of many religious leaders, mostly male, who decried abortion of any kind as a sin. As Bishop Richard Holloway points out in his book Godless Morality;

We are all experts at pointing out the importance of (religious) texts (and sacraments) that bring pain to others, while carefully avoiding the ones that challenge our own comforts. The rich always find it easy to call upon the poor to make sacrifices they would never dream of making themselves. Jesus was a challenge to the powerful to acknowledge their complicity in the fact of human misery. Only the destitute he told them were innocent, only the wretched were guiltless; only those who had no bread had no fault." (p.80)

The Gospel of John (1:29-41) is, among other things, a story about revelation and discovery through the Holy Spirit. At some considerable risk of embarrassment and derision, John the Baptist cries out to two of his faithful followers, "Look, here is the lamb of God." When Jesus turns and faces them after John’s declaration, he asks them, "What are you looking for?" It was following this short but yet risky encounter that Andrew and Peter packed it all in and began to follow Jesus, even unto his death. It was in this risking of something new and different, that Andrew, Peter and John the Baptist came to know Jesus as the promised Messiah and the Son of God! It was in this act and risk taking and discovery that the Church as the Body of Christ was born!

Discovery is often the mistress of failure, ridicule and the hope for change. The Church as an institution has never dealt very well with change. The graphic example is the crucifixion of Jesus. Hundreds of years later following Jesus’ death on the cross, Galileo ran afoul of the Church and its male hierarchy by proclaiming change and concluding that the sun did not rotate around the earth but rather the earth rotated around the sun, thus debunking the place of the earth as the center of the universe and God’s attention. Condemned as a heretic by the Church and in order to save his life, he was given the chance by the church Fathers to recant. In December 1991, the Vatican finally officially admitted that it had made an error in this matter.

Sir Isaac Newton, in his scientific research, radically redefined how theology defined the way in which God worked in the world. Newton said that there were natural explanations for many things in the world that had been previously believed to be acts of God. The world was seen by Newton as working on fixed laws. And so illness was no longer seen as a divine affliction and weather was deemed a morally neutral function of science.

Charles Darwin in the Origin of Species contradicted biblical literalism by saying that the world as a created piece was not yet finished and that it was in a constant state of evolution. Can anyone here ever comprehend that when chloroform was invented it was objected to on the grounds that it was beyond the natural order of things to anesthetize pain, because it was the intended law of nature that human beings should feel pain? Many of the great advances in science and medicine were made against the public opinion or the theologically grounded moral and ethical decision making of the day. None of us should forget this simple truth of history as we move forward into the complex world of genetic engineering and cloning for curative proposes.

In all of the debates on cloning for therapeutic purposes the Christian Church as one voice has been either silent or obnoxiously condemning. Christianity has left the discussion table too often when complex issues such as this come before God’s people and either retreats to the comfort of not taking a stand (which, in fact, is really taking a stand) or adhering to outdated, constraining moral and ethical imperatives that don’t work anymore in the lives of second millennium humanity.

Cloning and stem cell research are issues that will not go away no matter how much we would wish them to do so. They present the world and each of us with difficult decisions and choices.

Jesus cast out the demons of his day and talked openly about it. Science and technology in partnership with solid Christian theology ought to be able to do the same today. But, as people feared Jesus healing power then, so they feel threatened and fear the possibility of new forms of healing today.

What I know above and beyond what science and technology have told me lately is that the head of the Christian Church, Jesus Christ, was many things. He was along with being God’s son, a significant teacher, preacher, storyteller, collaborator, lover of humanity and above all else a gifted healer for his time. Jesus would not stand in the way of anyone who came to him seeking wholeness and renewed health. Jesus cast out the demons of his day and talked openly about it. Science and technology in partnership with solid Christian theology ought to be able to do the same today. But, as people feared Jesus healing power then, so they feel threatened and fear the possibility of new forms of healing today.

Therapeutic cloning and stem cell research have the promise of boldly doing something that Jesus preached passionately about; so that all of God’s children might have life in all its abundance and fullness. When the possibility of therapeutic cloning could cure persons who suffer from the paralyzing effects of spinal cord injury. Or transmute the crippling and terminal effects of muscular disease such as Multiple Sclerosis, Muscular Dystrophy and Lou Gehrig’s Disease, or stabilize or even cure cancer, a disease that affects one out of every five Californians... diabetes... Sickle Cell Anemia, and even Alzheimer Disease, then where is the Jesus in all of the moral and ethical decision making that says all cloning is anathema, a humbug, a sin, a spit in the face of God and the created universe? It is so easy to say no to such research when you are not the afflicted. When you are not immobilized, and when you are not facing a death sentence because of an incurable disease. Remember the troubling but dialogue raising bumper sticker from the Boston Women’s Health Collective: "If men became pregnant, then abortion would be a sacrament."

The Church too often reverts to outdated orthodoxy to condemn, or, at best, send up the gray smoke of neutrality. It is time for Christianity to get into the discussion and struggle over Therapeutic Cloning in ways other than using the Bible as an inerrant tool of conformity and condemnation.

Fear makes human beings react in strange and sometimes devastating ways. Too often we either attack, condemn, or retreat in silence to the safety of non-engagement, when new discoveries, technologies or medical treatments are revealed. The Church too often reverts to outdated orthodoxy to condemn, or, at best, send up the gray smoke of neutrality. It is time for Christianity to get into the discussion and struggle over Therapeutic Cloning in ways other than using the Bible as an inerrant tool of conformity and condemnation.

If Jesus was a healer and we are the Body of Christ, then we must now engage in seeking health and wholeness for all persons. It is not enough to simply pray for healing and cures of the body and soul. You and I must also work with the scientific community to see that there is a partnership in discovering and then applying such new cures to bring life in all its fullness to those who by no fault of their own, suffer a separation from the condition of good health that too many of us take for granted.

Happy are they who trust in the Lord! They do not resort to evil spirits or turn to false gods. Great things are they that you have done, 0 Lord my God! How great your wonders and your plans for us! There is none who can be compared with you. Oh that I could make them known and tell them! But they are more than I can count.

The Very Rev. John Bryson Chane currently serves as dean of St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral in San Diego, California, and is bishop-elect of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington.