A s Quintessential Human Act By Philip Hefner Cloning reveals the human situation today. The recent appearance of Dolly, the cloned sheep, as well as both the reports and the debate about cloning humans, provide us glimpses into the quintessential character of the human situation today. We face even the prospect of creating ourselves, in ways that are startling and troubling. In the first place, the scientific knowledge that underlies cloning and the technological ability to clone are no more and no less morally charged than is our basic human nature itself.
Cloning is neither unnatural or bizarre.
Rather, it is in principle an unsurprising exemplification of what we have known for a long time about ourselves. A creature that can, through genetic engineering, totally rearrange the life-forms that constitute our agricultural enterprises could also, almost predictably, be expected to learn eventually how to make itself. In cloning, we are in fact addressing ourselves, and it is about ourselves that we have the greatest questions. Cloned humans are real persons. The life we engineer in the laboratory is really life.