It has just been announced that the first human clones have been created. They were allowed to live a few brief days, but that was enough to proclaim the experiment a success. The scientist who accomplished the deed says that he is creating human embryos to be a new source of stem cells for medical research on a number of deadly diseases. Is that any better than killing a human embryo from a fertility clinic dish or freezer or an embryo destroyed in an abortion clinic?

When are we ever going to uphold the basic human right to life at all stages of life again? We used to think that human life was sacred and to be preserved at all costs. Now we are down to thinking that human life is worth preserving only when it is cost effective to society.

If the child is currently sustained in someone's glass dish in a laboratory, we question whether the experiment is worth the research grant funds used to maintain the necessary conditions for the child to survive outside of a woman's womb. There is rarely any provision to try to implant the human embryo into a woman to complete its development outside of the fertility clinics, and there it may languish in cold storage for years.

Of course, if the lab belongs to a private company using their own funds for the research, then it seems to be open season on any hapless tiny human who can't yet protest any violation of his or her human rights. Usually, he or she is studied and allowed to die without the chance of further development to prove his or her human potential was indeed more than a theoretical concept. It speaks alarmingly of the mindset of the medical researchers who can carry out such experiments.

If they don't show any more concern for the tiny humans they are exploiting in their laboratories than that, why should anyone believe that they have any real concerns for the older humans suffering from the diseases that they hope to cure? Are they really doing this for humanity, or for acclaim among their colleagues for solving a scientific mystery which just happens to affect human beings and receiving bigger research grants as their reward for their work?

Would you want one of them for your doctor, even if they promised you a chance to cure your disease with their latest findings? Can we ethically use the treatments coming from such research? You may get a chance to find out.

The latest flap over the smallpox vaccine is that it is going to be made using a line of human cells to culture the virus to form the vaccine. You may be faced with the decision of whether or not to use the results from exploiting human embryos sooner than you think if someone releases smallpox into the world again as someone is doing with anthrax.

Would you take a dose of the vaccine to protect your life if you knew for a certainty that it had been made this way? If not, can you support these latest human cloning experiments? Where will you draw the line on the deadly exploitation of another human being for your benefit?