Whenever we treat the “parts” of human life as a raw material or a research product or something we can make a fast buck with, we run the risk of treating human life as a commodity. For that matter whenever we treat people as products that is what we are doing. Of course this strips away the dignity of the person and says something about the culture which permits this type of treatment. Human cloning is a new way of cheapening human life, stripping away the dignity of the person, and treating human life as a commodity. We take a human egg from a woman, strip out her DNA, insert the DNA from the person we are cloning and then two things can happen. The new fertilized egg is implanted into a woman, and we have manufactured a person we have chosen to give life to OR we destroy that person for research. By definition, that is what a commodity is: “Something useful that can be turned to commercial or other advantage”.

Author Profile

Jennifer Lahl, CBC Founder
Jennifer Lahl, CBC Founder
Jennifer Lahl, MA, BSN, RN, is founder and president of The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network. Lahl couples her 25 years of experience as a pediatric critical care nurse, a hospital administrator, and a senior-level nursing manager with a deep passion to speak for those who have no voice. Lahl’s writings have appeared in various publications including Cambridge University Press, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Dallas Morning News, and the American Journal of Bioethics. As a field expert, she is routinely interviewed on radio and television including ABC, CBS, PBS, and NPR. She is also called upon to speak alongside lawmakers and members of the scientific community, even being invited to speak to members of the European Parliament in Brussels to address issues of egg trafficking; she has three times addressed the United Nations during the Commission on the Status of Women on egg and womb trafficking.