The cloning of “Dolly” the sheep in 1997 generated worldwide reaction. The United States imposed a moratorium on human cloning and a ban on federal funding for cloning research, which will be reviewed every five years. Congress has rejected bills making human clon- ing lawful as well as those demanding its prohibition. The opposition of international organizations to human cloning is clear. The Euro- pean Parliament, the Council of Europe, UNESCO, and the World Health Organization (WHO) have passed resolutions asserting that human cloning is both morally and legally wrong.
PROS
The technology is unsafe. The nuclear transfer technique that produced Dolly required 277 embryos, from which only one healthy and viable sheep was produced. The other fetuses were hideously deformed, and either died or were aborted. Moreover, we do not know the long- term consequences of cloning.
Cloning is playing God. It is not merely intervention in the body’s natural processes, but the creation of a new and wholly unnatural process of asexual reproduction. Philosophers and clerics of many faiths oppose human cloning. They caution that the failure to produce scien- tific reasons against the technology does not mean we should deny our strong instinctive revulsion.
Reproductive cloning injures the family. Single people will be able to produce offspring without a partner. Once born, the child will be denied the love of one parent, most probably the father. Several theologians have recog- nized that a child is a symbolic expression of the mutual love of its parents and their hope for the future. This sign of love is lost when a child’s life begins in a laboratory.
Many churches and secular organizations, including WHO, view reproductive cloning as contrary to human dignity.
Cloning will lead to eugenics. When people are able to clone themselves they will be able to choose the kind of person to be born. This seems uncomfortably close to the Nazi concept of breeding a race of Aryan superhu- mans, while eliminating those individuals whose charac- teristics they considered undesirable.
CONS
Cloning is no different from any other new medical technology. Research is required on embryos to quantify and reduce the risk of the procedures.
This argument assumes that we know God’s intentions. Moreover, every time a doctor performs lifesaving sur- gery or administers drugs he is changing the destiny of the patient and could be seen as usurping the role of God. Furthermore, we should be very wary of banning something without being able to say why it is wrong. This argument is wholly unsuited to the modern age. Society freely allows single people to reproduce sexu- ally. Existing practices such as sperm donation allow procreation without knowledge of the identity of the father. Surely a mother would prefer to know the genetic heritage of her child rather than accept sperm from an unknown and random donor? It might be better for the child to be born into a happy relationship, but the high rates of single parenthood and divorce suggest that this is not always possible.
When people resort to talking in empty abstract terms about “human dignity” you can be sure that they have no evidence or arguments to back up their position. Why is sexual intercourse to be considered any more dignified than a reasoned decision by an adult to use modern sci- ence to have a child?
Eugenics is much more likely to arise with develop- ments in gene therapy and genetic testing and screening than in human cloning. Clones (people with identical genes) would by no means be identical in every respect. You need only to look at identical twins (who share the same genes) to see how wrong that assumption is, and how different the personalities, preferences, and skills of people with identical genes can be.
132|The Debatabase Book
Cloning will lead to a diminished sense of identity and individuality for the resultant child. Instead of being considered as a unique individual, the child will be an exact copy of his parent and will be expected to share the same traits and interests. His life will no longer be his own. This is an unacceptable infringement of the liberty and autonomy that we grant to every human person. The confusion of the offspring is likely to be compounded by the fact that the “parent,” from whom he is cloned, will be genetically his twin brother. There is no way of know- ing how children will react to having such a confused genetic heritage.
Cloning will lead to a lack of diversity in the human population. The natural process of evolution will be halted, and humankind will be denied development.
Human reproductive cloning is unnecessary. The devel- opment of in vitro fertilization and the practice of sperm donation allow heterosexual couples to reproduce where one partner is sterile. In addition, potential parents might better give their love to existing babies rather than attempt to bring their own offspring into an already crowded world.
Cloning treats children as commodities. Individuals will be able to have a child with desired characteristics as a symbol of status, rather than because they desire to con- ceive, love, and raise another human being.
Children produced by reproductive cloning will not be copies of their parents. Different environmental factors will mean that children will not be emotionally or men- tally identical to the people from whom they are cloned. You would have to apply the same objection to identical twins. A small proportion of identical twins do, indeed, suffer from psychological problems related to feelings of a lack of individuality. However, cloned children would be in a better position than traditional twins because they will be many years younger than their genetic twins, who are, of course, their parents. Therefore, they will not suffer from comparisons to a physically identical indi- vidual.
Any reduction in the diversity of the human gene pool will be so limited as to be virtually nonexistent. The expense and time necessary for successful human clon- ing mean that only a small minority will employ the technology. The pleasure of procreation through sexual intercourse suggests that whole populations will choose what’s “natural” rather than reproduce asexually through cloning.
The desire to have one’s own child and to nurture it is wholly natural. The longing for a genetically related child existed long before modern reproductive technol- ogy and biotechnology, but only recently has medicine been able to sometimes satisfy that longing.
The effort required to clone a human suggests that the child will be highly valued by its parent or parents. Furthermore, we should not pretend that every child conceived by sexual procreation is born to wholly well- intentioned parents.
PROS CONS
Sample Motions:
This House would ban human cloning. This House would not make a mini-me. This House would not reproduce itself.
Web Links:
• American Life League. < http://www.all.org> Pro-life organization offers information on a variety of reproductive topics. • The Ethics of Reproductive and Therapeutic Cloning. <http://www.wits.ac.za/bioethics/genethics.htm> Academic article arguing
that there is no ethical reason to prevent research in reproductive cloning.