FREE ESSAY ON CLONING

CLONING

The 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 inaccurate 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 
deadly; 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 
avoid 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-contemporary 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. 
At present, there is no law in the United States and 
Canada directly addressing attempts to create a child through 
somatic cell nuclear transfer, cloning, although a variety of 
state and federal laws and policies do have some application.
In America, federal law already requires that clinics 
using assisted reproduction techniques, such as in vitro 
fertillization, be monitored. The requirement would apply, as 
well, to efforts to use somatic cell nuclear transfer cloning to 
create a child. 
State laws governing family relationships would also be 
stressed from dealing with paternity acts, surrogacy statutes, 
and egg donation statutes are not necessarily broad enough to 
address the kinship relationships involved in cloning human 
beings. The use of this technique would result in a child 
having as many as four individuals with claims to parental 
status based on some aspect of genetic connection: the person 
from whom the cell nucleus was derived, that individual's 
genetic parents, and the woman contributing the enucleated egg 
cell which contains a small fraction of DNA in the cytoplasmic 
mitochondria. In addition, if the egg with the transferred 
nucleic material is implanted in a gestational mother, the child 
will have two other potential parents: the gestational mother, 
and if she is married, her husband. Finally, the intended 
rearing parents could be unrelated to the individuals whose egg 
or nucleus was used, or to the gestational mother. The 
contributors to such cloning arrangements will have various, as 
yet ill defined, legal rights and responsibilities with respect 
to the resulting child.
Overall, existing law would severely restrict public 
funding for efforts to clone human beings; would monitor most 
efforts to clone human beings for safety and effectiveness; and 
would discourage premature experimentation. It would not, 
however, prohibit all such efforts. Further, characterize the 
family relationships that will spring up. 
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.