Editorial August 14, 1971 Issue

Man Can't Emerge from a Test Tube

Alan A. Aylwin

Presenting a lengthy discussion of the new genetics, a popular news magazine shows a cartoon of a small child walking past a rack of test tubes. The child waves to the test tubes, and says, "Good morning, Daddy."

The writer of the article remarks, "Test-tube babies, once the stuff of science fiction, are now not only possible, but probable."^{Time, April 19, 1971;}

But supposing a genetic engineer does produce a human being by synthetic means, has he in fact produced man? Christian Science answers No! This Science is teaching mankind that even the human being who seems to appear through normal birth processes is not true manhood. Neither human procreation nor genetic engineering can be the genesis of man's identity. Both are part of the dream-sequence produced by ignorant material belief. Mrs. Eddy writes, "The multiplication of a human and mortal sense of persons and things is not creation."^{Science and Health, pp. 263, 264;} And further on she continues, "The fading forms of matter, the mortal body and material earth, are the fleeting concepts of the human mind."