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Verse:Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. —John 1:3, 4, NIV
God is the Source of life. His powerful word brought all living beings throughout His vast universe into existence. “By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth.” “For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast” (Psalm 33:6, 9).
As created beings themselves, humans are unable to create any form of life. But they have genetically manipulated existing life-forms.
On July 5, 1996, Dolly the sheep was born through a series of genetic and reproductive experiments implemented by the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland. She “was cloned from a cell taken from the mammary gland of a six-year-old Finn Dorset sheep and an egg cell taken from a Scottish Blackface sheep.” Since then, many other large mammals have been successfully cloned.
Those experiments could open the door for the development of a new genetically modified human generation. In February 1997, President Bill Clinton asked the American National Bioethics Advisory Commission to study the legal and ethical issues involved. The commission concluded that it was “morally unacceptable for anyone in the public or private sector, whether in a research or clinical setting, to attempt to create a child using somatic cell nuclear transfer cloning.” On November 11, 1997, UNESCO’s Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights asserted, “Practices which are contrary to human dignity, such as reproductive cloning of human beings, shall not be permitted.”10 In January 1998, French president Jacques Chirac called for a global prohibition of human cloning.11 But how long will the scientific community abide by those restrictions? Unquestionably, genetic experiments have helped solve some genetic diseases previously considered incurable. But some genetic experiments are disrespectful to God and His amazing creation, which originally “was very good” (Genesis 1:31).
We should remember that God created humanity in His own image and likeness (verse 26), and we should respect it as such.
Let us allow God to be God and His creation to remain as He originally intended.