Human Cloning isnt as scary as it sounds

Human Cloning Isn't as Scary as It Sounds


The recent news of the successful cloning of an adult sheep-in which the
sheep's DNA was inserted into an unfertilized sheep egg to produce a lamb
with identical DNA-has generated an outpouring of ethical concerns. These
concerns are not about Dolly, the now famous sheep, nor even about the
considerable impact cloning may have on the animal breeding industry, but
rather about the possibility of cloning humans. For the most part, however,
the ethical concerns being raised are exaggerated and misplaced, because
they are based on erroneous views about what genes are and what they can
do. The danger, therefore, lies not in the power of the technology, but in the
misunderstanding of its significance.

Producing a clone of a human being would not amount to creating a "carbon
copy"-an automaton of the sort familiar from science fiction. It would be
more like producing a delayed identical twin. And just as identical twins are
two separate people-biologically, psychologically, morally and legally,
though not genetically-so a clone is a separate person from his or her
non-contemporaneous twin. To think otherwise is to embrace a belief in
genetic determinism-the view that genes determine everything about us,
and that environmental factors or the random events in human development
are utterly insignificant. The overwhelming consensus among geneticists is
that genetic determinism is false.

As geneticists have come to understand the ways in which genes operate,
they have also become aware of the myriad ways in which the environment
affects their "expression." The genetic contribution to the simplest physical
traits, such as height and hair color, is significantly mediated by
environmental factors. And the genetic contribution to the traits we value
most deeply, from intelligence to compassion, is conceded by even the most
enthusiastic genetic researchers to be limited and indirect. Indeed, we need
only appeal to our ordinary experience with identical twins-that they are
different people despite their similarities-to appreciate that genetic
determinism is false.

Furthermore, because of the extra steps involved, cloning will probably
always be riskier-that is, less likely to result in a live birth-than in vitro
fertilization (IVF) and embryo transfer. (It took more than 275 attempts
before the researchers were able to obtain a successful sheep clone. While
cloning methods may improve, we should note that even standard IVF
techniques typically have a success rate of less than 20 percent.) So why
would anyone go to the trouble of cloning?

There are, of course, a few reasons people might go to the trouble, and so
it's worth pondering what they think they might accomplish, and what sort
of ethical quandaries they might engender. Consider the hypothetical
example of the couple who wants to replace a child who has died. The
couple doesn't seek to have another child the ordinary way because they feel
that cloning would enable them to reproduce, as it were, the lost child. But
the unavoidable truth is that they would be producing an entirely different
person, a delayed identical twin of that child. Once they understood that, it
is unlikely they would persist.

But suppose they were to persist? Of course we can't deny that possibility.
But a couple so persistent in refusing to acknowledge the genetic facts is not
likely to be daunted by ethical considerations or legal restrictions either. If
our fear is that there could be many couples with that sort of psychology,
then we have a great deal more than cloning to worry about.

Another disturbing possibility is the person who wants a clone in order to
have acceptable "spare parts" in case he or she needs an organ transplant
later in life. But regardless of the reason that someone has a clone produced,
the result would nevertheless be a human being with all the rights and
protections that accompany that status. It truly would be a disaster if the
results of human cloning were seen as less than fully human. But there is
certainly no moral justification for and little social danger of that happening;
after all, we do not accord lesser status to children who have been created
through IVF or embryo transfer.

There are other possibilities we could spin out. Suppose a couple wants a
"designer child"-a clone of Cindy Crawford or Elizabeth Taylor-because
they want a daughter who will grow up to be as attractive as those women.
Indeed, suppose someone wants a clone, never mind of whom, simply to
enjoy the notoriety of having one. We cannot rule out such cases as
impossible. Some people produce children for all sorts of frivolous or
contemptible reasons. But we must remember that cloning is not as easy as
going to a video store or as engaging as the traditional way of making babies.
Given the physical and emotional burdens that cloning would involve, it is
likely that such cases would be exceedingly rare.

But if that is so, why object to a ban on human cloning? What is wrong with
placing a legal barrier in the path of those with desires perverse enough or
delusions recalcitrant enough to seek cloning despite its limited potential and
formidable costs? For one thing, these are just the people that a legal ban
would be least likely to deter. But more important, a legal barrier might well
make cloning appear more promising than it is to a much larger group of
people.

If there were significant interest in applying this technology to human beings,
it would indicate a failure to educate people that genetic determinism is
profoundly mistaken. Under those circumstances as well, however, a ban on
human cloning would not only be ineffective but also most likely
counterproductive. Ineffective because, as others have pointed out, the
technology does not seem to require sophisticated and highly visible
laboratory facilities; cloning could easily go underground. Counterproductive
because a ban might encourage people to believe that there is a scientific
basis for some of the popular fears associated with human cloning-that
there is something to genetic determinism after all.

There is a consensus among both geneticists and those writing on ethical,
legal and social aspects of genetic research, that genetic determinism is not
only false, but pernicious; it invokes memories of pseudo-scientific racist
and eugenic programs premised on the belief that what we value in people is
entirely dependent on their genetic endowment or the color of their skin.
Though most members of our society now eschew racial determinism, our
culture still assumes that genes contain a person's destiny. It would be
unfortunate if, by treating cloning as a terribly dangerous technology, we
encouraged this cultural myth, even as we intrude on the broad freedom our
society grants people regarding reproduction.

We should remember that most of us believe people should be allowed to
decide with whom to reproduce, when to reproduce and how many children
they should have. We do not criticize a woman who takes a fertility drug so
that she can influence when she has children-or even how many. Why,
then, would we object if a woman decides to give birth to a child who is, in
effect, a non-contemporaneous identical twin of someone else?

By arguing against a ban, I am not claiming that there are no serious ethical
concerns to the manipulation of human genes. Indeed there are. For
example, if it turned out that certain desirable traits regarding intellectual
abilities or character could be realized through the manipulation of human
genes, which of these enhancements, if any, should be available? But such
questions are about genetic engineering, which is a different issue than
cloning. Cloning is a crude method of trait selection: It simply takes a
pre-existing, unengineered genetic combination of traits and replicates it.

I do not wish to dismiss the ethical concerns people have raised regarding
the broad range of assisted reproductive technologies. But we should
acknowledge that those concerns will not be resolved by any determination
we make regarding the specific acceptability of cloning.