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What is cloning and why is it
unacceptable to many thinkers? Why does Leon Kass (his essay, The
Wisdom of Repugnance, was originally published in 1997, four
months after Dolly was cloned) find cloning repugnant, but
artificial insemination acceptable? What is so distinctive about
somatic cell nuclear transfer which makes it so dangerous to the
future of mankind, while in vitrio fertilisation, embryo
manipulation, embryo donation and surrogate pregnancy are all
unquestionably regarded as beneficial?
Is it not the case
that cloning will free us at last, as a race, from the tyranny
of sex? That we too will become masters of our future, authors
of our destiny? And for those gay persons of either gender who
wish to have children, will not the ability to clone, give birth
to the ultimate single parent child? Are we not in fact, with
the development of successful methods of contraception already
able to deny in both thought and deed the inherent procreative
teleology of sexuality itself?
And why should
children be left to the vagaries of the sexual lottery? Do the
correction of genetic disorders even before birth, not lead us
(logically) to the benefits to be derived from designing those
whom so far we have only been able to nurture? Why should the
distinctive individuality of every human being be a conceptual
stumbling block to welcoming a procedure which will consistently
replicate mirror images of some superb original? What rights can
an unborn cloned child have, if the unborn have rights at all?
Should we consider cases in which such a 'person' might feel
that it were "better far not to have been born at
all"? In what sense can cloned children stand in family
relationships with others? Is not the parent of such a child
also its sibling (being genetically identical)? How are the
rival claims of negative and positive eugenics to be balanced on
a single scale? What is the scale that will weigh up the options
of 'to clone or not to clone'? Are we dealing solely with
utilitarian considerations or do our moral intuitions (the
feeling of repugnance, as Kass would say) count for anything at
all? These and other questions are skillfully and persuasively
dealt with by Kass in the first and longest of the four essays
collected in this book.
The rejoinder by
James Wilson, which was actually published first originally as The
Paradox of Cloning. While it shares a certain instinctive
misgiving about cloning per se, it argues that under rigid
parameters (having largely to do with parental responsibility)
cloning as a procedure presents no significant moral risks.
Wilson argues "that parental constraint would prevent organ
farming and the indiscriminate or political misuse of cloning
technology." Kass is much less optimistic, but both are in
agreement that the mass cloning of humans such as we have seen
in the most recent of the Star Wars films, is an unlikely
scenario. Technology demands that the nucleated cell can only
grow in a uterus. Thus all clones require mothers.
Since these essays
were written, much has happened in the field of genetics, not
least the sense that cloned products are not as healthy as we
would like them to be. Cloned animals (which neither author has
any ethical objections to) have been found to be genetically
defective. The moral issues, says Kass, require a clear
statement of the facts. All the facts, it would seem, are not
yet in.
As for the
question that every one wants answered: what's the right choice?
I suggest that debates about fundamental moral issues, while
they need facts to help us make choices, are themselves designed
to expand our moral horizon. That cloning has come under moral
scrutiny, like gay rights or those of unwed mothers, is not to
suggest that our society has become more permissive, but that we
have become more sensitive to issues that have long remain
buried under the mantle of things that should not be spoken of.
When Harry Potter mentions Voldemort, his listeners shudder, but
Harry is not fazed. There's a lesson in that.
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THE
Scientia imprint, recently launched by the Centre for
Philosophy and the Foundations of Science, Delhi makes
available important recent works in philosophy and the
philosophy of science in an attractive and affordable format.
The authors of this particular volume have impeccable academic
credentials, while the issues they raise are of general
interest. Media attention has brought into focus questions
thrown up by the rapid developments in the technology of
cloning. Once completed, the human genome project will make
feasible all sorts of commercial uses of this technology.
Science fiction and Hollywood have for many years depicted
these future scenarios with a lack of optimism calculated to
excite our darkest fears. The harvest of bodies that the
technology of cloning makes possible seems to devalue our own
existence, so long and painfully extracted through the process
of natural selection. Cloning makes selection less natural, it
is thought, no longer requiring the slow filter of time to
plot its trajectory. Like all human knowledge, cloning has
both the possibility of great benefit and great harm, as did
the discovery of fire and the invention of dynamite. What
major issues are raised by this new wisdom?
