January 2003

"I do believe that it is the choice of every parent to choose the child they want, even if they don't have any infertility problem," Boisselier said. "Who are we to tell the parents the child that they should have?" - Brigitte Boisselier, Head of Clonaid
December 27, 2002 Canoe News, canoe.ca

Dear Brother Knights,

I hope that this holiday season found you where you were needed most in God’s eyes. Far be it for me to assume that I actually know where that would place you, but my hope is that it brought you together with your family like it did for me.

Over the last few weeks we have seen some strange developments in the news regarding cloning and it’s scientific progression. A company called Clonaid has claimed to have produced a cloned human baby girl named Eve, and several more to arrive in the next few weeks. What is said to have happened is that they successfully used the DNA from a 31 year old American woman who’s “partner” was infertile, and implanted it into the nucleus of a mature egg, replacing the egg’s existing half portion of DNA. Then it was implanted into the woman after it began to grow and showed its viability. This process has been repeated for several other couples, one more in North America, one in Europe, and two in Asia. The situations vary from parents using the harvested DNA of their children that had passed away, to same-sex couples wanting their own children.

Clonaid is a for-profit outreach branch of a religion called “Raelian’s,” who essentially believe that their founder, a French journalist, was given truth’s to the origins of life on Earth by aliens, who claim to not only be the creators mistaken by us for god’s, but who also take credit for every prophet and visionary to walk the planet, including Christ. It has been classified as a religious cult by Christian groups and contains literally truckloads of inconsistencies within it’s own theologies. There is a fantastic article on this whole issue and the group itself on the Internet at www.catholiconline.com/featured/headline.php?ID=139. While other scientific representatives are skeptical of this particular group’s lack of scientific credibility and their unproven results, they refrain from discrediting the possibility of the accuracy of the reports.

Advanced Cell Technology of Massachusetts is a company, which is in the attempted process of creating human embryos for the specific purpose of stem cell research. Dr. Robert Lanza, a scientist working on the project is quoted as saying that it has proven easier to develop an embryo that has been implanted into a mother’s uterus, than it is to develop one in a laboratory. The fact that this company is even working on a project to progress stem cell research is far more disturbing to me than the possibility of a cloned human that has been brought to life and faces the challenges and opportunities of life here on Earth with the rest of us. At least this cloned child has a chance to fulfill her role in God’s plan.

The quote at the beginning of this letter comes straight from Brigitte Boisselier, the head of Clonaid, claiming success in the race to create a cloned human. It bothered me the most in the articles that I have been reading. This may be due to a lot of reasons, but I think that ultimately it becomes extra sensitive to me right now due to the approaching due date for the new arrival in our family.

Most expecting parents go through the many stages of preparation before the baby arrives. At first you are shocked, then you are excited and that excitement sticks with you through the duration. Then you begin to pick up on things around you that in your head you can incorporate into a possibility for your new child. Some of these things could be for example, what the child will grow up to be, what they will be good at, what they will have in common with the rest of the family and what they will bring to the world in their own unique way. But with all the dreams of potential come also the real possibilities of something…different. I hesitate to say the word “wrong” because it is fundamentally selfish to think that way and unfair to you, the child, and it is a betrayal of faith to think that way. What I mean is that the process of creating human life is a long and complex path, which I trust only God to handle. Many things can happen and pop up on that journey.

Before any baby arrives, questions arise in your mind. Have we prepared properly? What if it is born with a genetic disease? What if it has no arms or legs? What if it has heart problems or developmental issues? What if, what if, what if. I cannot handle thinking about these things on my own. I become a walking Carr wreck and plunge into an ulcer-instigating storm of insecurity and self-confidence bashing. I think that we can easily convince ourselves that these are all things that just aren’t right, and therefore are some kind of injustice or punishment. I say that I cannot handle even thinking about these things on my own, because my salvation is as always, through Jesus with faith and prayer. It normally takes only seconds for Him to calm me down and remind me that if these things are to happen, then they are meant for my family and me to deal with. The spirit within the child remains, regardless of it’s package, and ultimately it is the gift of the spirit that has been presented to us by Him, not the security of being able to avoid having to deal with and face some of the more difficult problems of life.

At this I am usually ashamed of my previous feeble confidence in the Lord, and I am happy to be living another day with my family. That is truly a gift we receive from day to day and we have no right to expect it to go on indefinitely. To say that I will be happy if it has all its fingers and toes would be somewhat inaccurate, as that makes no difference to me now. I will be there to give thanks to the Lord regardless if our baby is born at all, because even that means something to Him and us. The possibility of facing the unknown is going to be frightening no matter what happens, but second-guessing God and the many gifts that He bestows upon us is not even remotely in our jurisdiction as servants of the Lord. And so we are trying to prepare for the arrival of a new soul to share life with, and not so much preparing for a new Carr.

This brings me back to the quote from Clonaid. “Who are we to tell the parents the child they should have?” That is true. We have no right to tell parents what child they should have. However I don’t think that even parents have that choice under God. I guess that is to say that if they expect to be masters of their own domain, then they set themselves up for a lifetime of disappointment, committing this mistake over and over again. The funny thing about it is that the driving force behind a parent trying to control the outcome of a new child is that they are simply trying to achieve what is traditionally deemed a “normal” child and subsequently a “normal” family. Define normal anyway. There are actually many definitions in the dictionary for this word, but the most accurate I would think is this; To occur naturally. What occurs naturally with genetic engineering and chemical manipulation? So by their efforts to gain “normal”, they create a completely abnormal process with untold risks and consequences. I don’t want to assume that I understand or without question know God’s will, but I have a hard time fitting this one in to what I think it is.

I recently watched an investigative report on television that told of a little girl that had been produced involving fertility clinics. She was currently involved in a custody battle involving five different parties. First there was her biological father and his wife, who had paid the clinic to create embryos and aid them in their quest to have children, as the wife had fertility problems. As usual, there were about thirty embryos created in order to implant several at a time into the mother until one or more of them had taken and began to grow. As a result there were many left over embryos waiting to be dealt with. On the consent forms they were to choose what to do with the left over embryos. Their choices were donating them to science, destroying them, storing them for future consideration, or finally donating them to other infertile couples. This last one was their choice, and they quickly forgot about it.

Second in line was the woman who had donated her eggs to the clinic for this purpose. A complete stranger to the first couple, her donation was to achieve monetary returns, never expecting to hear about their destination and fate.

The third, and most ridiculous of them all, was the surrogate mother, who also was a stranger to the biological parents. Her role was to have an embryo implanted into her and carry it through until birth. Then she was to be paid for her service and out of the child’s future. She was hired however not by either one of the biological parents, but by a new couple who had come to the clinic looking for help in having a baby. Neither one of them donated any genetics to the process, and instead received some of the embryos left over from the original parents. All three of these people had never met or heard of the biological parents.

The baby was born and the happy new adoptive parents brought her home to their new lives together. A successful scientific and cultural story, until the couple divorced only a couple of years later. The adoptive father was being sued for child support as a result, which he claimed was not his responsibility as he never wanted the child to begin with. His lawyer launched a huge investigation to discover just who should be financially responsible as well as who should have custody of this child who had so many parents.

To their credit, all of the parties involved were willing to contribute and even assume total custody and responsibility for this little girl of three years that they were totally unaware of and did not expect existed. All except of course the adoptive father. Through the irresponsibility and carelessness of many different parties involved, there was a scientifically created human who stood to have her life tossed about at random for years to come by the court system. Normal?

The courts ruled that she should stay with her adoptive mother, and that the adoptive father was responsible for child support. Although he had already spent more money on legal bills thus far than he would have had he paid to put her through school, he continues to fight it in court and is also upset that he is made out to be the bad guy. I have so much to say about that, that I just can’t even find a place to begin. Let’s just say that quite simply I regard him as a representative of the future of society, if not the present. Self centered, self-serving and wanting nothing to do with responsibility of anyone but himself, and even that responsibility stands to be questioned if the possibility arises that he could pass it on to others as well. I don’t think that I could even sit down with this guy and stay calm enough to talk about this with him. I would end up strangling him out of frustration I think. Not very Christian I know. So instead I would celebrate that this beautiful little girl has a life to cherish with a huge extended family that hopefully will be a part of her life forever, and not brutal destruction at the hands of science, or years of storage in a freezer with dozens of brothers and sisters.

So what does this say? It speaks volumes to only a few of the reasons why we are not meant to create and administer life by science. Above and beyond abortion, euthanasia, and cruelty to any life, we potentially create a massive exploitation of humans on a continual basis, even with the best of intentions. Can we as Christians, stop this franchising of life? I would doubt it on a practical level. But through Christ, anything is possible. I have read that this culture of death phenomenon is not new to the world. It has existed in different forms and under different names throughout the history of man. There was even a point when something called “exposure” was practiced. This was when a newborn child would be left out on the rocks for the scavengers to kill and devour. All in the name of protecting the choice of the parent to live life without this gift from God. The church and morality prevailed over that and other forms of this phenomenon in times past and I expect that somehow we will prevail again. Not an easy task however, and one that cannot be accomplished as we watch from our comfy chairs. We are expected to do our part in spreading God’s love and the promise of His truth.

I think that the best we can hope for is another day to do His good work and share life with those he has blessed us all with, for better or worse. We all know that these days will come to an end eventually for each of us, and the time we had to love and protect each other will be gone on this Earth. Heaven awaits us all, I hope even for a cloned little girl named Eve.

Trying to show love,
and thankful for receiving it
Vivat Jesus
Chris

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