Cloning: Ethical, Social, and Theological Components

This dissertation, by His Beatitude Archbishop Makarios Griniezakis of Australia, was submitted to the Medical School of the University of Crete.

It examines cloning from the perspective of an Orthodox Bioethical approach, without formulating a series of prohibitive or permissive rules.

Instead, it seeks to stimulate critical thinking on the socio-ethical and theological components of cloning, which are successively presented in the text, and to articulate a theological discourse, as contemporary reality refutes the Latin maxim "silete, theologi, in munere alieno" - "be silent, theologians, on matters not your own."

The topic of cloning is quite difficult.

It becomes even more difficult when one attempts to examine it through the lens of Orthodox Theology and Bioethics. The effort of this dissertation aims more at providing an impetus for further discussion, rather than imposing a specific opinion.