When does progress stop and playing God begin? When South Korean researchers announced Thursday that human embryos had been successfully cloned in a laboratory, the instant ethical ramifications flared up like a Roman candle.
There is no right to play God, opponents of embryo-cloning contend. The creation of life is at the will of our Creator and no one else, especially not some lab coat in some underground laboratory. The creation of a human embryo is the creation of human life, and to alter that embryo is a whimsical juggling act of life and death.
Each breakthrough in genetic engineering - from Dolly the sheep's birth, her death, stem-cell research and beyond - confronts progress with ethics. Every instance of genetic engineering is passionately argued on both sides until, quite frankly, it stops being news.
Last year, the United Nations placed a two-year gag order on human cloning decrees. No news is good news - we'll make our minds up when this whole thing has died down, thanks.
But whenever a controversial issue comes part and parcel with ethics vs. scientific progress, ignoring the circumstances is fastidiously stubborn. If we ignore the clamor, the shouting and the discourse, we ignore the issue itself and our capacity to learn from it as a race of human beings.
When considering the intent of the research and use cloned human embryos, the potential outweighs the moral implications. Therapeutic cloning - the practice of generating embryos as possible treatment for diseases - is not playing God. It answers a greater ethical rule - the golden one.
Treat others as you want to be treated. If the technology available affords an injured or ill person an opportunity to live or to live a prolonged healthy life to buck their prognosis, don't they deserve it? If a scientist in a laboratory is able to fabricate healthy organs to replace sick ones, is it ethical to deny the technology and allow suffering?
The moral and ethical implications of essentially creating a human life outside a mother's womb indeed run deeper than an opinion in a newspaper can possibly provide. Religion, philosophy and faith are lifelong beliefs, embraced for the sake of having beliefs to fall back on.
The argument can be made that more people should have a core belief structure to keep society in a consistent level of morality, but the degree of morality is forever up to the individual. The insistence that human embryos should be cloned to combat disease and prolong life is not an invasion of anyone's personal beliefs, it's a belief in and of itself and both need to be respected.
The world needs to take the opportunity for diabetes, Parkinson's Disease, central nervous system injury and more to be wiped out entirely or drastically sedated. For the sake of people whose numbers never show up on the organ donor list, we say accept this technology as a method of enriching life, not manipulating it.
We all stand to learn a great deal more about how technological and scientific advance can work for us. The moment we mistrust the intent of progress, however, is the moment we set a limit to our capabilities as humans.
