Top Church Body Calls for Worldwide Ban on Human Cloning
The highest decision-making body of the National Council of Churches of Christ (NCC) in the USA and Church World Service (CWS) adopted a new policy this week that called for a worldwide ban on human reproductive cloning.
Two resolutions stemmed from the new policy, “Fearfully and Wonderfully Made,” that was adopted by the NCC and CWS General Assembly on Wednesday during its annual meeting this week. The resolutions called for a worldwide ban on human reproductive cloning and called for more supervision of government and private sector laboratories developing bio-warfare weapons, according to NCC News.
“We offer this policy to our member communions so that they may be faithful advocates that all biotechnology tools will be used for the benefit of all God’s children,” said Clare J. Chapman, committed chair of the NCC biotechnology policy to the Assembly, according to the Presbyterian News Service on Thursday.
The policy declared the sanctity of all human life as God’s creation and condemned human reproductive cloning.
Chapman also noted that Christian groups around the world are looking at the United States for “clear leadership” to indicate human cloning will not occur.
“In our current deregulated environment, tens of hundreds of thousands of ‘failed human clones’ could be created in the interest of someday cloning a human being that develops into adulthood,” stated the resolution. “This future offends our moral sensibilities and diminishes us all as human beings. Human beings are not a means to an end, and certainly not experiments along a path to a dubious future.”
The annual meeting convened 248 delegates from 35 member Christian denominations in Orlando, Fla., on Nov. 7-9 to discuss controversial topics such as Iraq policies, human biotechnology, global warming, and poverty.
