It is as if we are now living on a new planet — one in which all the natural boundaries of sex and reproduction have been left behind. The technologies of reproduction are redefining sex, marriage, relationships, family, and the human story.

The Wall Street Journal blows the cover off the international trade in babies and reproductive technologies this week, as reporters Tamara Audi and Arlene Chang tell of the emergence of a market that assembles the “global baby.”

The most promising avenues of stem-cell research are using cells derived from adult cells, not from embryos. The absolute determination of some researchers to destroy human embryos cannot be explained by scientific determination alone.

Humanity had better think hard about whether this is a journey we are ready to entrust to scientists alone. The most urgent question raised by this new announcement is not so much what it means, but where it leads.

The defense of human dignity is the responsibility of all human beings, but certain individuals bear a special responsibility due to position or influence. This is certainly the case with Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health.

For most Americans, the moral status of the human embryo is a question that seems quite remote. Even as hundreds of thousands of “excess” human embryos are now stored in American fertility clinics and laboratories, to most Americans these frozen embryos are out of sight and out of mind. Thus, one of the most important moral challenges of our day remains largely off the screen of our national discourse. The issue cannot remain out of sight or out of mind for long.

The development of a human embryo from a cloned cell—as claimed by a group of South Korean scientists—has pushed the clock of genetic engineering toward the midnight moment of full human cloning. Quickly pushed into the background by the rush of other news, this development signals a new urgency and the need for serious debate on the cloning of human beings before the technology is fully upon us.

“In this case, the woman won the jackpot,” said Heather Kowalski, spokesperson for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. She was referring to Bobbi McCaughey of Carlisle, Iowa, who is currently awaiting the birth of septuplets.

“I was convinced that there was still plenty of time.”(1) With those words the author Aldous Huxley looked back to 1931, and the publication of his famous novel Brave New World. Huxley’s vision of an oppressive culture of total authoritarian control and social engineering was among the most shocking literary events of the twentieth century. But just 27 years after the publication of Brave New World, Huxley was already aware of his underestimation of the threat represented by modern technocratic society.

“We are the first species to have taken evolution into our own hands,” claimed the late Carl Sagan. His words sounded chillingly prophetic last week when the British government proposed the legalization of “limited” human cloning. Defenders of human dignity had better take quick notice.