[Question:]{.underline} Can cloned human babies be used for experiments and for growing spare parts, to help others?
[Answer]{.underline}: This is what is called therapeutic cloning, as distinct from reproductive cloning. The clones are to be destroyed, and the living cells recuperated, within a certain number of days, usually 15.
The principle here is very simple. The end does not justify the means. It is never permitted to do something evil, that good might come from it, for the goodness or evil of a human act is defined by its end, more than by anything else.
Clones are true human beings, for they have an immortal soul, just as does a test-tube baby. The human soul is inseparable from the life of a human being, so that whenever the body is organized in such a way to have human life, the soul is present, as the principle of this life. Despite the immorality of the way in which test-tube babies are conceived, and the way in which genetic material of a clone is introduced into the nucleus of the ovum, once this has been done and there is human life, there is a human soul. If the cloned embryo is then frozen, the soul is not frozen. It is just that the processes of life are temporarily interrupted, ready to start again when the temperature environment becomes suitable. A frozen embryo, cloned or otherwise, must consequently be considered alive.
The therapeutic use of human clones for stem cell research or to provide a source of stem cells to regenerate organs in other people requires that the cloned embryo be killed. It is consequently manifestly immoral, and opposed to the natural law and to the fifth commandment. It consequently behooves all Catholics to stand up against this grave insult to Almighty God, and to do all in our power to prevent this great evil of man attempting to raise himself to take God’s place.
In principle, a person who actively participates in such cloning procedures incurs the same penalty as one who participates in the procuring of an abortion, namely an excommunication (Canon 2350, §1 in the 1917 Code and Canon 1398 in the 1983 Code). It is, however, true that a person could maintain there is a difference between an abortion and the killing of a cloned baby, inasmuch as the clone is in a laboratory, not an infant developing in his mother’s womb. In such cases, the Church provides for the interpretation of her penal laws in the most favorable manner (Canon 19 in the 1917 Code and Canon 18 in the 1983 Code), so that in case of doubt the excommunication would not be incurred.
Answered by Father Peter Scott, SSPX.