Professor of culture underscores need for moral vision on
cloning, euthanasia

By Kyle Roberts

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (BP)–Human cloning and euthanasia were among
issues discussed by Nigel Cameron, distinguished professor of
theology and culture at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School,
during the Scudder Lecture Series March 30-31 at Midwestern
Baptist Theological Seminary, Kansas City, Mo.

“Nothing is so significant for our culture and its future as the
assumptions of what it means to be ‘one of us,'” Cameron said.
Behind the issues of abortion, human cloning and euthanasia lies
the fundamental question of what it means to be human, he said,
and in the field of bioethics, more than anywhere else, our
common humanity is being redefined. “Secular and postmodern
bioethics people have become the gatekeepers of life and death.”

“If it can be done with sheep, can it be done with people?” asked
Cameron. The effect of the growing technological development in
the cloning of mammals, he said, has been the emergence of
serious questions that humanity has never before thought about.

Relaying testimony he presented before the House Judiciary
Committee on cloning, Cameron said, “If we are unable to assert
the primacy of the public will and of human moral vision over
technological development, it is hard to see any context in which
we can avoid the technological redefinition of our culture and
our notion of human dignity.”

The negative results of cloning are obvious, declared Cameron.
“If this technology comes on stream, you’ll see 5,000 Madonnas or
5,000 Michael Jordans, whoever your favorite tabloid hero happens
to be. Immediately it becomes possible to reproduce the person.
So you’ll have whole classes of people who are essentially
identical twins, by the hundreds and by the thousands.”

To pick up a distinctively Christian understanding of human
dignity, said Cameron, one must go back to Genesis. “We are
driven back to the model we have in Genesis, to our Christian
vision of marriage, of sex, of morality and of procreation.”

Cameron suggested the incarnation did not begin in Bethlehem with
the birth of Jesus, but rather, when God became incarnate in an
embryo, as an embryonic member of the human species.

Cloning, Cameron said, presents us with the possibility for the
generation of real human beings, who partake like us in the
dignity of the image of God, to have their identity and dignity
compromised by the manner in which they are reproduced — as
deliberate photocopies of another person.

“We will see cloning take place,” Cameron said. “The human
community will recoil and will ask how we could ever let this
happen in the first place.

“The euthanasia question promises to be one of much greater
significance than abortion,” Cameron noted. Asserting there is a
connection between the issue of human cloning and euthanasia, he
said, “On the one hand, we claim we have the power and the right
to manufacture human life, and on the other hand, at the end of
life we claim we have the power and the right to end life on our
own terms.”

In Psalm 8, Cameron said one finds the defining affirmation of
the dignity of human life. “To be human is to be set in a high
place, to a place just below God himself.”

Because it is blasphemous to claim the highest place for
ourselves, Cameron said, we must focus the euthanasia debate not
on compassion, but on autonomy. This is the position which says,
“I am the master.” The most central element in this debate then,
Cameron said, is the position of “breaking free from God in order
to assert yourself.”

Most proponents of euthanasia argue only for voluntary
euthanasia, said Cameron. “It’s an argument based on autonomy.”

Cameron spoke on the distinction between euthanasia and
physician-assisted suicide. “If you kill someone because they ask
you to, you have no defense to the charge of homicide, because
your life is no more at your disposal than anybody else’s is at
your disposal.”

The central laboratory for euthanasia lies in Europe, Cameron
said. In Holland, he explained, voluntary euthanasia runs
rampant. “A large number of physicians there are guilty of
homicide. A large number of death certificates are being
falsified. The euthanasia system there went out of control.”

Speaking of the necessity of dealing with the issue as
Christians, Cameron stated, “We have a prime need for Christian
education within the church. The battle for the Christian mind
within the church is one in which we must engage and which we
must win. It is altogether distressing that the private attitudes
of many Christians in this matter are not distinct from those who
think in a purely secular way.”

Cameron pointed out that while Christians will be known for not
killing their unborn children, the jury is still out on whether
their view of euthanasia finally will be a distinctive view.

“The community of the Christian church must respect the dignity
of human life from the beginning even to the end,” Cameron said.

The Baptist Press email service is a cooperative effort between
Baptist Press and GOSHEN.net. Visit Baptist Press on the web
at http://www.BaptistPress.org/