Really? This is your idea of compassion? Scientists develop a way that could potentially free people from the life-crushing burden of genetic disease and you say it's "contempt for life" and try to ban not the practice (which, as the current laws say, can't be used in practice for therapy), but cloning altogether?

You want to spread preventable suffering through the world in the name of piety? I don't think Jesus would be particularly happy with that idea.

Typical Christian ignorance. Ideology over real compassionate help for couples seeking a healthy child. Christians really don't have any morals when its comes to the real world.

Wow those are some acerbic comments, Dustin and Gene! Did you read the part of the article where embryos are created and destroyed for this research? Where is the compassion for those?

To Dustin and Gene,

For Christians who believe that the embryo, regardless of its stage of development, is a human being, body and rational soul, any research that results in its death is forbidden because it results in murdering a human being that is created in the image of God. The Lord says, "Yon will not murder." This is not based on pious opinion but the very Word of God who gives us technology to sustain and care for human life, not to kill it as a means to an end.

The human embryo is created in the image and likeness of God. This image was lost by Adam and Eve in the fall into sin, but restored and renewed for humankind by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ who is the image of God (Ephesians 4:24; Colossians 3:10). Therefore, we do not kill, but help, befriend, and support the unborn embryo in every bodily need. Viewing the destructive use of research on human embryos through the cross of Jesus, all human life, from the zygote [fertilized egg] to the embryo to the fetus to the newborn to the older adult belongs to the Lord, its Creator and Redeemer (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).

The Scriptures teach that the unborn is a human being. "Here, I am speaking about the unborn... being a person and not about the unborn as a being. . . having personhood" (G. Meilaender, Body, Soul and Bioethics, University of Notre Dame Press, 1995). The latter definition requires that a human being possess specific characteristics or attributes, such as hobbies and sentience (conscience awareness) to be "classified" as a person. Thus, since the embryo doesn't fit this definition or possess certain characteristics or attributes, it can't be a human person, only a human being that will become a person sometime after birth. I reject this capacity-based notion because it separates the doctrine of created man as a body and rational soul. The person is a part of that embodied created human. Therefore, the embryo is a human being with a body and a rational soul.

www.mtio.com

If I understand the science correctly (before reacting to it), it seems to me that there's still one father (the sperm) and one mother (the egg). We're not talking about creating a person from two women or two men.

Nor are we talking about creating a person with characteristics of three parents. The egg and sperm are fertilized in the normal way before putting the fertilized nucleus of the embryo into what is basically the "casing" of another egg. The mitochondrial DNA they're talking about don't code for characteristics of a person. That DNA, written out as mtDNA, is basically just producing proteins for the metabolism of energy for the cell. It keeps the cell functioning normally.

According to one NIH site: "Mitochondrial DNA contains 37 genes, all of which are essential for normal mitochondrial function. Thirteen of these genes provide instructions for making enzymes involved in oxidative phosphorylation. Oxidative phosphorylation is a process that uses oxygen and simple sugars to create adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the cell's main energy source. The remaining genes provide instructions for making molecules called transfer RNA (tRNA) and ribosomal RNA (rRNA), which are chemical cousins of DNA. These types of RNA help assemble protein building blocks (amino acids) into functioning proteins."

So, in terms of coding, we're not talking about much outside of the basic process of cellular metabolism here.

Now it is true that the child's mtDNA would be contributed from a second mother. We all inherit our mtDNA from our mothers, and it does't really change much over time, or from one generation to the next, like the DNA from the nucleus. But this new technique does not, it seems to me, mean that a person could claim to have "two mommies." The inherited characteristics are still all from the first woman, not the second.

I guess all of this is no more troubling than IVF itself. If you have moral objections with that, then you will with this new technique. But I don't see anything here in terms of a new moral evil. We're still in the same moral ballpark, so to speak.

But look at Dolly, the sheep. She had a bizarre aging process and died an early death. Scientist have no idea what the long-term outcomes are for embryos developed in this way. We're not there yet. I have more confidence in nature to prevent a chimera like two sperms fused together.

It's so important for Christians to understand the science behind the debate. Start by reading Robert George's book Embryo. He gets into the bioethical considerations. Or try Lewis Wolpert's new book How We Live and Why We Die: The Secret Lives of Cells. He also has a book called The Triumph of the Embryo. Well worth reading.

Here comes the Anti Christ.