Cloning

1. Cloning Cloning I I

2. Original nucleus Oocyte (unfertilized egg) “Donor” nucleus Some Background: • What is cloning? • Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT) • Reproductive Cloning • Therapeutic Cloning

3. Some Background: • Why would someone want to be cloned? • Would you want to be cloned? • What ethical positions might one take on cloning?

4. Leon R. Kass: “Preventing Brave New World” Kass’ Project • Kass raises four particular objections to the project of human cloning: • That human cloning constitutes unethical experimentation. • That human cloning threatens identity and individuality. • That human cloning turns procreation into manufacture. • That human cloning means despotism over children and the perversion of parenthood.

5. The Revulsion of Cloning • “[M]ost people are repelled by nearly all aspects of human cloning.” (331) • Mass production of human beings; • The idea of mother-daughter or father-son “twins”; • The idea of a woman bearing and rearing a genetic copy of herself, her spouse, or a deceased loved one; • The idea of conceiving a child as an exact “replacement” for another who has died; • The utilitarian creation of duplicates of oneself for “spare parts”; • The idea of humans “playing God”… • Revulsion is not an argument… but it may reflect an intuition that something has been violated. • “We sense that cloning represents a profound defilement of our given nature as procreative beings, and of the social relations built on this natural ground.” (332)

6. Four Objections to Human Cloning: (1) Human Cloning Constitutes Unethical Experimentation • Cloning could easily be used to reproduce living or deceased persons without their consent. • The success rate of cloning (at least at first) will probably not be very high. • Fewer than two to three percent of all animal cloning attempts have succeeded. • Before Dolly was created, Scottish scientists transferred 277 adult nuclei into sheep eggs and implanted 29 clonal embryos. Dolly was the only living result. • Many of the so-called “successes” have included major disabilities and deformities.

7. Four Objections to Human Cloning: (1) Human Cloning Constitutes Unethical Experimentation (cont’d) • There is good reason to think the same sort of success rate would be found in attempts at human cloning. • “We cannot ethically even get to know whether or not human cloning is feasible.” (332)

8. Four Objections to Human Cloning: (2) Human Cloning Threatens Identity and Individuality • Even if human cloning were successful, the clone may experience concerns about his distinctive identity: • He will be in genotype and appearance identical to another human being. • The person to whom he is identical will be his “father” or “mother”. • There are unique, unprecedented dangers of mixing the twin relation with the parent-child relation. • Virtually no one will be able to treat his clone as he would a traditional child. • “What will happen when the adolescent clone of Mommy becomes the spitting image of the woman with whom Daddy once fell in love?” (333)

9. Four Objections to Human Cloning: (2) Human Cloning Threatens Identity and Individuality (cont’d) • The life of the clone will constantly be scrutinized in relation to that of the older version. • “Unlike “normal” identical twins, a cloned individual—copied from whomever—will be saddled with a genotype that has already lived.” (333) • The matter will only be worse for the clone of somebody famous.

10. Four Objections to Human Cloning: (3) Human Cloning Turns Procreation into Manufacture • Human cloning would represent a giant step toward turning procreation into manufacture. • Steps have already been made in this direction with in vitro fertilization and genetic testing of embryos. • Children would become simply another kind of man-made thing, with prospective “parents” adopting a technocratic attitude towards their children. • “The problem is that any child whose being, character, and capacities exist owing to human design does not stand on the same plane with its makers.” (333) • The effect is the dehumanization of children and the commodification of human life.

11. Four Objections to Human Cloning: (4) Human Cloning Means Despotism over Children and Perversion of Parenthood • Normally, in producing children, we embrace the novelty of the child, and accept the limits of our control. • Reproduction by human cloning will create a “profound misunderstanding” of the parent-child relationship. • Children are not our property or possessions. • Children are supposed to live their own lives, not ours. • Whereas most parents have hopes for their children, cloning parents will have expectations. • “Cloning “seeks to makes one’s children after one’s own image (or an image of one’s choosing) and their future according to one’s will.” (334) • Children will hold their cloners fully responsible for their nature and their nurture.

12. Slippery Slope Argument • Defenders of cloning want large-scale cloning for animals, and wish to preserve cloning as a human option for exercising our “right to reproduce.” • We already practice forms of “unnatural,” artificial, and extra-marital reproduction, as well as early forms of eugenics. • So, defenders argue, cloning is “no big deal.” • However, such a principle “slips” all the way down to producing children whose entire genetic makeup will be the product of eugenics, without limit. • Once this is a possibility, parents will leap at the opportunity to “improve” their offspring: “Indeed, not to do so will be socially regarded as a form of child neglect.” (335)