KANT GET THERE FROM HERE:

What Would a Clone Say? (GARY ROSEN, 11/27/05, NY Times Magazine)

[Y]ou don't have to be a raving Bible-thumper to entertain moral doubts about so-called therapeutic cloning ("therapeutic," that is, for potential patients; not such a great deal for the embryos). All you need is a bit of Kant from Ethics 101, especially the part about treating other people, presumably even proto-people, not as a means to your own ends but as ends in themselves. It is an injunction hard to square with the literature on S.C.N.T., with its talk of "harvesting" and "programming" stem cells.

It's pretty sad to see secularists with their hearts in the right places try to argue for decency on such issues, , a task that is impossible without recourse to God. What makes Mr. Rosen's attempt especially pitiable though is that the point of Kant's philosophizing was the futile attempt to find a grounding for traditional Judeo-Christianity that didn't have to invoke the authority of God. Bad enough that Kant failed, but Mr. Rosen is reduced to invoking him as a personal deity--thus the "injunction"--in order to ground his own moral wish. Multiplying errors doesn't yield truth.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 27, 2005 4:06 PM