The Vegetable Sermon & Human Cloning

Thomas Fairchild (1667-1729) was an English nurseryman and pioneer gardener. The author of The City Gardener led a movement for gardening within the city of London at a time when the rapid rise of smoke pollution presented a serious problem. Fairchild was the first to experiment with hybridization of plants. Before 1717 he placed the pollen of Sweet William (Dianthus barbatus) on the style of a gillyflower (Dianthus caryophyllus). The next year, the new hybrid flower (a type of carnation) came into bloom looking like neither of its parents alone, proving the sexual reproduction of plants. But Fairchild worried about backlash at such an attempt to take God's power over creation into his own hands. Once announced, the flower became known as "Fairchild's Mule."

Fairchild seemed to feel bad about the hybrid as well, establishing an endowment at St. Leonard's Church, Shoreditch, in the Hackney section of London for the preaching of an annual sermon on either "The wonderful works of God in Creation" or "On the certainty of the resurrection of the dead, proved by certain changes of the animal and vegetable parts of creation". Known in Shoreditch as "The Vegetable Sermon", Fairchild's bequest was observed until the 1990s.

It might seem like overkill to fund an annual sermon to make ammends for creating a hybrid flower, but there is something to Fairchild's act that makes me wish for some similar humility on the part of those working on human cloning. But it seems at times as if once a thing becomes possible, it becomes inevitable as while an individual might be able to control a given urge, as humanity it seems that all things possible are done sooner rather than later. As a species, we place no limits on our own actions, even if as a man or woman we may.

What do you think? Should we show a bit more humility in how we pursue the possible? Or am I seeing this all wrong?

peace,
The Rev. Frank Logue, Pastor

Catching Up with Clones

A recent article at NPR.org, Human Cloning May Be Just Around the Corner, brings one up to speed on what is taking place in research related to cloning including its goals and obstacles. The report says in part,

Here's why: If a skin cell is used to make a cloned embryo, any stem cells from that embryo would be genetically identical to the person who provided the skin cell. And thus, that person's immune system wouldn't reject tissue grown from those stem cells.

This promise of tailor-made stem-cell therapies has prompted several teams of scientists around the world to try to make embryonic stem cells from cloned embryos. But Robert Lanza of the biotech firm ACT says no one's managed it — yet.

There have now been at least a dozen … species cloned, but for each species there's been a unique set of problems, and the human is no different," Lanza says.

The article also says,

No reputable scientist is attempting to clone a live human being. That said, several teams around the world are trying to make cloned human embryos with the intention of deriving embryonic stem cells. No one has succeeded yet.

And it notes,

There's still no question that most people consider attempting to clone a human being unethical—at the very least because the cloning process seems to create animals with health problems.

For people opposed to destroying human embryos for any reason, cloned embryos present an ethical dilemma: Since a cloned embryo is a potential human life, it's wrong to destroy it.

Two articles in the archives are:
The Moral Morass
of Human Cloning

and two years later

The Ethics of Cloning

peace,
Frank+
The Rev. Frank Logue, Pastor