That s like saying removing someone s heart is just using their tissue. Second, there is no moral imperative to use reproductive cloning technology. Ellul s way of defeating the imperative was to repudiate technology. If technology simply were not developed, there would exist no imperative to use it. While I have some sympathy with the distinguished French intellectual, I must demur.
Technology is inert, impersonal, and neutral.
Technologists on the other hand are alive, personal, and volitional. Technologists make decisions about how technologies will be used. What Ellul got right was the fact that once a particular choice has been made, that decision puts into motion certain states of affairs which, domino-like, make certain results almost inevitable. This is what another philosopher of technology, David Nye, calls technological momentum. Technology does not carry any imperative, but those who decide whether or how that technology will be used establish a momentum.