Cloning - the ethcis of cloning - The MindFrame Technique, Winchester Foundation

What is MindFrame?

Go back to page 1

<< Back to Main news menu

RESPONSE FROM READERS TO THE PERSPECTIVE ON THE DEBATE AS TO WHETHER CLONING IS "ETHICAL" OR NOT LETTER

Comment from Shirley:
You've asked for comments on the idea of cloning and Terry's letter. You probably didn't expect to hear from me about this, but here I am.

I don't like it, I don't agree with it, and if I could, would get it completely banned throughout the world. Nature is nature, and I don't believe that we should interfere with it in any way. The fact that we do is unfortunate, and the fact that we are living in a world that is so reliant on the unnatural is also very unfortunate.
I don't even like the fact that we use computers to do virtually everything these days, although as you know, that is my work.

Some things are almost forced upon us in order to survive day to day in the average society. Cloning is unnecessary, and should not be condoned by any society. Next we will be doing things as they did in the movie "Coma", and then saying that that is fine because "we can, because we have the ability".

I for one will be disappointed if Terry goes on air giving the impression that he agrees with it. There are a lot of unenlightened people out there who could misconstrue what is said, and to propogate an attitude that cloning is "OK" is just heading us further in the direction of microchips in our bodies and a bigger control of our lives by unknown entities. My Spirit doesn't give a damn, but my human incarnation at this point in my life does.

Comment from Daniele
Hi to all - A quick comment to the article:

I disagree with the lack of importance given to the "hosting" body. The newsletter makes sense and I am not here to discuss the moral issues concerning the practice of cloning.

I do however believe that the body plays an incredibly important role and that being born beautiful and healthy does differ from being crippled or ugly and that it does have a tremendous impact on our spiritual development (not preferring the one option over the other. sometimes being not physically gifted might be a help to push our growth in more fulfilling directions).

"Creatively" making use of the tools could generate indeed unpleasant side effects or dysfunctional behaviours. Bodies discharged as not perfect might be one. the spirit might be immortal but here's forcing it in and out of "hosts".

Michael Jackson might be intrigued by the idea but I also believe that improving oneself is as important as accepting what one has being given. I am not obviously referring to life threatening illnesses etc.

I am fundamentally pro cloning. I am not hypocrite enough not to see the potential aberration that could come with it, both on a physical and on a spiritual level.

I also think once you open the door you must not put limits or rules to the consequences, good or bad, that might occur as a result. It's about taking responsibility over a choice to avoid running for shelter once the outcome is not the one that was predicted. I assume it's always 50/50.

Something to think about.

Comment from David
Hi Terry! Nice to hear from you again.

I agree entirely with your point about the body being like the car and the driver being an independent entity and so from that point of view all is fine.

My objection is that cloning is done principally (entirely?) to produce another body from which cells will be taken to repair the body of an earlier child. Where this involves something like bone marrow transplant, which I understand is excruciatingly painful, I'm not happy about the ethics. The second child might well end up feeling used --- not loved for itself but for what it can do for an elder sibling ("who must therefore be more loved than I").

Admittedly naturally conceived children have also been used for this purpose where suitable. However any consent obtained from a dependant child, cloned or not, may not be freely given, so the ethics are not straight-forward even now.

The feelings of cars disabled by cannibalisation are not known. Mine have certainly given me all kinds of messages in the past. But I suspect that the consciousness organising the signals is my own and as long as I remain happy and appreciative the cars seem cheerful to undergo extremes of hard work and weather without apparent suffering.

Comment from Thomas
Terry,

Your article on cloning rings so true.

I have always had mixed feelings on the subject, mostly around ethics and not so much about technique or our ability to do it. Your article is refreshing in that it takes a stance that is obvious and yet one that I have never considered. Here are some of my thoughts on cloning:

Someone might want to clone themselves to gratify their own ego by creating a living monument that they might erroneously perceive to be an expression of their immortality. Sooner or later they will drop their body at death and move on, leaving a generation (or possibly more if cloning continues) of carbon-copy bodies that would all be occupied by different souls. Like you, I don't see the dilemma here other than the psychological stuff that both donor and clone would have to work out - but then who are we to know why a soul would choose a cloned body in the first place in order to run off its karma during the incarnation in the body.

The mere fact that a soul was prepared to inhabit Dolly's body is evidence that there is a universal willingness to allow the process to occur otherwise cloned bodies would never live.

Society might want to preserve the knowledge of important/influential persons like Einstein, Mozart, etc. in hopes that their genius would be available on-tap for future generations. There is some evidence that rats, that are injected with the brains of dead rats that learned to navigate a maze, have an advantage over similar rats that weren't injected. They are more inclined to navigate correctly sooner.

Cloning might not be to simply create look-alikes but to create living archival material or human vaults. Here, I agree with you that the simple act of cloning a famous person is no different from cloning someone less famous. I agree that cloning would not preserve their genius for they are not their body. The cloned body might need to be injected with the donor's brain cells in order to transfer some of their knowledge - if this is indeed possible - but then why bother with the cloning process because any body would suffice.

Tissue from bodies cloned for spare parts is not rejected by the donor's body. Persons may wish to have a warehouse of spare parts to undergo panel and bumper repairs to allay their fear of illness and death. In reality they are only perpetuating their myth and missing the point of reincarnation.

Their death should not be feared but honoured as a sacred part of the process of life. But, if science so happens to find a way to clone a body and keep it alive without a soul, then so what! Let them use the parts to keep their "vehicle" in good order. I'm sure that medicine, in the case of severe illnesses or accidents, already keeps bodies alive long after the soul has left.

Cloning the strong to supply the army with soldiers, the good-looking to supply fashion houses with models, strong cows to grow a dairy herd, a dying child as a replacement for grieving parents are all possible and pose only moral issues. By following your train of thought, not one of these clones would contravene any higher spiritual law and society is getting itself in a tangle for nothing.

Comment from Marcelle
Mr Winchester

I listened with fascination to your talk show on 702 last night.

I had a cancer experience 2 years ago and grew tremendously by it. I try to tell people of the insight I have gained but words fail me and I cannot express myself. I have not read extensively about what we are all about but I was quite interested in a book by Sylvia Brown titled "Life on the other side". I have been under the impression that this book has changed my sub-conscious understanding of life beyond what we can see.

When I listened to the interview last night it was as if you were speaking my understanding and I knew immediately that it was not a book that gave me insight but it was the experience of coming to myself's soul that gave me the little bit of understanding - for I know there is much I have to learn still.

Comment from Glynnis
I firstly need to make clear that I do not believe that God created anything at all because if He did everything would be perfect and there is absolutely nothing perfect in the whole galaxy, not humans, animals, nature or the universe. I believe we merely exist as well as God merely exists. I believe that everything is governed by the law of nature & not God or the will of God; I don't believe God has power over everything as nature or destiny needs to run its course being governed by the law of nature, hence, karma, etc.

I feel that people (professors of science) or anyone today thrive on recognition & reward whether honest or dishonest. Majority of people can't live simply & live & let live, they thrive for more & more & generally are never satisfied.

How can we judge what it ethical or not. If they have managed to clone then so be it, it is done.

If they have cloned a human being then the body would be a replica of the gene they used but the soul would be an individual. Not sure how the soul would enter a clone because I believe that in the beginning before people became body conscious & became aware of the different sexes the soul was invoked from the soul world into a woman's womb (lets say at the time of Adam & Eve) and gave birth naturally. When they became body conscious the soul merely entered a woman's body through reincarnation & not always necessarily from the soul world. As you may have noticed nowadays the world is so over populated, hence all the souls in the soul world are now living in bodies and are merely being reincarnated. Not sure whether this makes sense to you.

You know the question remains when they clone a person is it done through a woman's womb & if this is so then a soul may enter & become an individual & never exactly the same as the person the clone copied (if you know what I mean).

You see when a soul enters a woman's womb the womb is already about 3 months pregnant, ready to accept the soul. When the woman is ± 4 months and she feels life that is when the soul enters & that is why (although they probably don't realise it) doctors & religions don't agree with abortion after 3 months.

You know Hitler (the German who slayed Jews) wanted to make a perfect human race & I think that this is one of the reasons why they are trying to clone, although I am sure there are many other reasons, eg: prevention of certain heart, lung deases, etc. Perhaps it's to reach immortality which is impossible because all matter degenerates except the soul as the soul is eternal. I think people would be shocked if they had to think about how old their souls really are because there is no limit to the universe & its age.

Comment from Shahindran
I must begin my response by posing a question to you, and Terry, are you playing devil's advocate for the sake of starting a debate, or is the "ethical" head stand a real perspective that you hold to?

If one is to enter a debate on karmic level, attempting to unpack the complexity of Atma versus Paramatma and its relationship to the human body, or the body of any living entity, one must have as a point of departure fundamentals that would guide a series of attitudes, morals, ethics. etc. etc. etc. The Atma is essentially without personality, it being just energy.

Karmic debt as understood by many philosophical schools in the east vary from "we choose our birth to learn or re learn lessons" to the "instant Karma" philosophical schools who would have it that rebrith is driven to be a desire to continue and an inability to break the bonds of attachment, and not previous acts or deeds, and so I can wax lyrical abut the volumes written in the Eastern World on the nature of Karma and its relationship with Atma and the pulse that is the life force and its link to the material form that houses it.

There is no single agreement to a debate that has raged on the Indian sub continent for the past 12 000 years. All agree on one thing, Atma exists. but if we are to take the core "Hindu:" philosphy that Bhrama [the creative impulse deified] means literally in Sanskrti "to expand" and that Bhraman, the ultimate divine that is without personality literally means "the immensity" or "the force" that is within all living things, or the approach of the Bhakta's: the debates render themselves obsolete, and leaves us with having to create a rationale for existence and with the sticky task of having to create ethics and morals and laws to govern ourselves.

In other words, where do we draw the line? just as we must draw lines for those who even today kidnap other humnan beings and harvest their organs for sale on a hungry global market. can you see where I am going with this?

Sounds like both Terry and Tom have seen that badly made Swarzenegger movie; 6th day?

if this film, as an hypothesis, can be used as a point of departure, then the secret to Atma is the personality, and this is in turn housed in a series of synapses and other functons in the brain [or as the tantric mystics would have it, that area between the ajna chakra and the Sahasra chakra that is the Soma chakra that is the though processes that is the Ego and the ID. So on producing the clone, all this information is recorded on a disk, and then reprogrammed into the new body, and so the original personality continues.

all of these hypothises obviates the need for a debate around ethics, souls, God and Karma.

As a Tantric HIndu Witch, I must state my viewpiont. Who is to say that the clone is without personality? Who is to say it will not feel, think, have emotions, desires, as we do? Whether these are the things that determines the existence of a soul/atma or whatever is irrelevant. What is fundamentally important, is the fact that I believe that a life once created, must be granted the protection of a constitution that ensures its human right to choice, and freedom.

This is a conviction I hold, not just as a Tantric Hindu witch, but also as a Homosexual who has had to fight the oppressions that exist in my world, and the world I come from. So, you may ask, why is he now on a political soap box? simply because the rationale for colonialism and the destruction of whole societies of people, and the creation of institutions such as slavery, was based on the belief that they did not feel, think, desire and becuase they were not christian, they had not souls!!!

There, now I can get off my moral soap box and say only this. come the day that whole societies of clones exist, and they need a voice to fight their struggle for liberation, as ridiculous as this debate is, I shall be there fighting it for them. blessed be!

Comment from Johan
To me it's very simple:
I belief cloning is part of our evolutionary process.
The one example that comes to my mind is the discovery of fire by early man. It has given him certain powers and set off an extraordinary evolutionary process whereby man has become a better survivor and a much more intelligent being. If our ancestors did not learn to control this energy, the chances are that Homo sapiens would never have developed or that this development would have taken much longer to materialize.

I think that cloning in the context of medical science should be seen in a similar light. It just enables us to move forward at a much faster pace whereby our species will develop and become more intelligent in a much shorter time span.

There are obviously a lot of ethical questions about the process and it could lead to all kinds of unforeseen disasters. In the case of the discovery of fire it had a tremendous negative impact on the environment and a lot of other species became extinct because of it. But it has also helped man to move forward.

The same applies today. Those who are against cloning must in my mind argue that our ancestors should never have picked up that burning stick. We are once again using our ingenuity to move forward as it is our nature to progress and evolve and to better ourselves. This means that cloning is part of our natural process.

I also belief that souls will choose what is available to them. No soul today can choose the body of a Neanderthal or a dinosaur, since they have become extinct and our planet has evolved to become something different. For all we know the human body will be replaced and in a few generations there might not even be a need for a physical body.