How often have we witnessed, helplessly, the heart-wrenching situation where someone’s small child has died, sometimes not even through tragic circumstances. But, sadly, sometimes kids just simply happen to die, for an array of reasons. The parents are usually devastated - left utterly bereft of joy or hope. Their little light has simply been extinguished from their lives. How often will we wring our hands along with them and grieve with them as they take their ‘last resort’? That urgent prayer to God to somehow -‘give them just one more chance’ – just give them back that one precious thing – their beloved child again - that singular being worth living for.

We watch their every prayer being offered up, and they, in turn, watch it simply drift away into some vacuum, or ‘ether’? Yet, if there be no God to grant them their miracle - why should Science not offer a miraculous hand? Why should science not grant them, that which God hath denied them?

Certainly, those specialist scientists in such a project would immediately be accused of ‘playing God’. That is quite predictable. Predictable also, from the experimental cloning of the first adult sheep, the important research doors that were opened - along with the whole new breed of moral dilemmas. Predictably, too, were those with a religious bent who began raising strong moral objections about the cloning of mature humans. Even politicians and ethicists began raising fears of the spectre of laboratory created humans – the casting of dark shadows over "the existence of the ‘human soul’."

There are other surprises. Already, a United States gay organisation "Clone Rights United Front" [CRUF] has marched in support of cloning, but for different reasons. They stated that, although they wished to have children, the old fashioned method of reproduction was not much to their liking. Lesbian feminists, too, find exciting the prospect of women assuming some direct control over reproduction.

Yet, it’s obvious that the most likely source for the first serious demands on such a service, [the cloning of postembryonic humans] will probably come from distraught parents, perhaps having lost a child through some tragic misadventure. The cloning[reproduction] of that child would be a far easier proposition in many ways than the cloning of some aged billionaire. One would simply save a few cells from the deceased infant and its twin could them be replicated relatively easily – such a technology is not very far away. It’s hard to say just how close it really is, because the public is traditionally the last to know the devil of the detail.

Nonetheless, from the perspective of the deceased child, there is no argument that it is most certainly and absolutely dead and gone. But from the point of view of the grieving parents and relatives, their child would be literally ‘raised again from the dead’. They would be granted a ‘second chance’ – a ‘back-door’ into time, somewhat like in the movie "Groundhog Day".

In other words, they would be offered a ‘fresh start’. They could give birth to their much beloved child all over again – they could even raise it ‘all over again’, only this time, knowing all of its potential, perhaps not making quite so many mistakes with this precious ‘second chance’? What once seemed like science fiction, is now beheld as simply a matter of time, funding, politics and morality. All that is left, is the honest answer to a simple question. Your child is gone, but you have the ‘Genie’s bottle’ in your hands. What should you do?

__________________
Things have a tendency to be the way they are.

There is no assurance that a clone would actually grow to be the same child. Identical twins are technically clones and very often you see two very different individuals that simply look alike. Grieving parents who could afford to clone a lost child might be even more disappointed when the child didn't grow up to be a perfect replacement of the lost child. After all, they are older and have more experience to draw upon and would not be able to raise the new child in exactly the same manner as they raised the first.

__________________
"It's not alive, It's not alive, It's not alive. Because I said it isnt', there's your proof jerk." ...lexi

"As far as your logical fallicy shit - shove it. I am a woman."...naturemomma

Modern version of Stephen's King's Pet Cemetary.

I love my children, I would be devasted beyond reason if they died, but I wouldn't clone them. When they die, the soul that made them whole, is gone.

__________________
Ephesians 5:15

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyR41JbpL_g

So your saying that a cloned child has no soul?

__________________
An informed voter scares the Goverment lackeys.

An American first and always a Conservative.

**************************************************
Well "flatearth" I have often wondered how long it would take for the "cloning of the dead" for multiple various reasons to come on to the sceen. There are many reason that death takes away something that is desired-loved-needed-important to other people and/or governments.

I guess my only thought is that such a thing would be such a dramatic & astronomical change to the "natural order" of things, that there is probably no way to predict the far reaching consequences of such a deviation to the natural order of life & history. ...pjwky

Yes, she is.

__________________
Gun control is giving criminals guns and taken guns away from law abiding citizens.

************************************************
Well, the self proclaimed & infalliable top "Soul Cop", Pope Benedict XVI, says that cloned humans do have souls. (And of course as such, they would fall under his autocratic but infalliable jurisdiction.) Nice to know. ...pjwky

The soul that I loved would be gone.

__________________
Ephesians 5:15

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyR41JbpL_g

__________________
Things have a tendency to be the way they are.

Well do you think that God would give a soul to the clone?

__________________
An informed voter scares the Goverment lackeys.

An American first and always a Conservative.