Ethical Issues

Although much of the reaction to cloning humans has been the product of both hype and fear, serious ethical questions also have been raised. One of the most serious concerns is that cloning might lead to harm to a child produced in this way, just as it has in some cases of animal cloning. For this reason alone, caution is advised. Some people have pointed out, though, that fertility clinics have had broad experience in growing human embryos, and thus cloning humans might be less risky than cloning animals. However, objections are also based on other considerations.

One ethical objection to human cloning is that it would amount to "playing God." The idea is that only God can and should create a human life. This role is specifically reserved to God, so we take on a role we should not play when we try to do it our­selves. Those who hold this view might use reli­gious reasons and sources to support it. Although this looks like a religious position, it is not neces­sarily so. For example, it might mean that the coming to be of a new person is a creation, not a making or production. A creation is the bringing into being of a human being, a mysterious thing and something that we should regard with awe. When we take on the role of producing a human being, as in cloning, we become makers or manip­ulators of a product that we control and over which we take power. Another version of this objection stresses the significance of nature and the natural. In producing a human being through cloning, we go against human nature. In humans, as in all higher animals, reproduction is sexual, not asexual. Cloning, however, is asexual reproduction. Leon Kass is one of the strongest proponents of this view (see the reading selection by him in this chapter). He alleges that in cloning someone, we would wrongly seek to escape the bounds and dictates of our sexual nature. According to another criticism of the "playing God" concept, attempting to clone a

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human being demonstrates hubris in that we think we are wise enough to know what we are doing when we are not. When we deal with human beings, we should be particularly careful. Above all, we should avoid doing what unknowingly may turn out to be seriously harmful for the individuals produced as well as for future generations.

Those who defend human cloning respond to this sort of objection by asking how this is any dif­ferent from other ways we interfere with or change nature—in medicine, for example. Others argue that God gave us brains to use, and we honor God in using them especially for the benefit of humans and society. Critics also point out that in using technol­ogy to assist reproduction, we do not necessarily lose our awe in the face of the coming into being of a unique new being, albeit it happens with our help.

A second objection to the very idea of cloning a human being is that the person cloned would not be a unique individual. He or she would be the genetic copy of the person from whom the somatic cell was transferred. He or she would be the equivalent of an identical twin of this person, although years younger. Moreover, because our dignity and worth are attached to our uniqueness as individuals, cloned individuals would lose the something that is the basis of the special value we believe persons to have. Critics point out the difficulties that clones would have in maintaining their individuality— similar to the difficulties that identical twins have. Sometimes they are dressed alike, and often they are expected to act alike. The implication is that they do not have the freedom or ability to develop their own individual personalities. This objection is sometimes expressed as the view that a cloned human being would not have a soul, that he or she would be a hollow shell of a person. The idea is that if we take on the role of producing a human being through cloning, then we prevent God from placing a soul in that person.

One response to this objection points out how different the cloned individual would be from the original individual. Identical twins are more like each other than a clone would be to the one cloned. This is because they shared the same nuclear environment as well as the same uterus. Clones would have different mitochondria, the genes in the

cytoplasm surrounding the renucleated cell that play a role in development. Clones would develop in different uteruses and be raised in different cir­cumstances and environments. Studies of plants and animals give dramatic evidence of how great a difference the environment makes. The genotype does not fully determine the phenotype—that is, the genes' actual physical manifestations. CC, the cloned cat mentioned above, does not quite look like its mother, Rainbow, a calico tricolored female. They have different coat patterns because genes are not the only things that control coat color. Just one year later, the visual difference was even more clear. CC also has a different personality. "Rainbow is reserved. CC is curious and playful. Rainbow is chunky. CC is sleek."²⁰ Although genes do matter, and thus there would be similarities between the clone and the one cloned, they would not be iden­tical. On the matter of soul, critics wonder why could God not give each person, identical twin or clone, an individual soul because any living human being, cloned or not, would be a distinct being and so would have a human psyche or soul.

A third objection to human cloning is that any person has a right to an open future but that a cloned human being would not. He or she would be expected to be like the originating person and thus would not be free to develop as he or she chose. The person of whom someone was a clone would be there as the model of what he or she would be expected to be. Even if people tried not to have such expectations for the one cloned, they would be hard pressed not to do so. Critics of this argument may admit that there might be some inclination to have certain expectations for the clone, but, they argue, this undue influence is a possibility in the case of all parents and children, and one not limited to clones. Parents decide on what schools to send their chil­dren to and what sports or activities they will pro­mote. The temptation or inclination may be there to unduly influence their children, but it is incum­bent on parents to control it.

Related to the previous objection is one that holds that cloned children or persons would tend to be exploited. If one looks at many of the reasons given for cloning a person, the objection goes, they tend to be cases in which the cloning is for the

412 PART TWO ■ ETHICAL ISSUES

sake of others. For example, the cloned child could be a donor for someone else. We might make clones who are of a certain sort that could be used for doing menial work or fighting wars. We might want to clone certain valued individuals, stars of the screen or athletics. In all of these cases, the clones would neither be valued for their own selves nor respected as unique persons. They would be valued for what they can bring to others. Kant is cited as the source of the moral principle that per­sons ought not simply be used but ought to be treated as ends in themselves.

Critics could agree with Kant but still disagree that a cloned human being would be any more likely than anyone else to be used by others for their own purposes only. Just because a child was conceived to provide bone marrow for a sick sib­ling would not prevent her from also being loved for her own sake. Furthermore, the idea that we would allow anyone to clone a whole group of individuals and imprison them while training them to be workers or soldiers is not living in the pres­ent world in which there are rightly legal protec­tions against such treatment of children or other individuals. So, also, critics may contend, the pos­sibility that some group might take over society and create a "brave new world" in which children were produced only through cloning is far-fetched and nothing more than fiction.

Some people believe that if human cloning were a reality, then it would only add to the confusion within families that is already generated by the use of other reproductive technologies. When donated eggs and surrogate mothers are used, the genetic parents are different from the gestational parents and the rearing parents, and conflicts have arisen regarding who the "real" parents are. Cloning, objectors contend, would be even more of a prob­lem. It would add to this confusion the blurring of lines between generations. The mother's child could be her twin or a twin of her own mother or father. What would happen to the traditional rela­tionships with the members of the other side of the family, grandparents, aunts, and uncles? Or what will be the relationship of the husband to the child who is the twin of the mother or the wife to the child who is the twin of her husband?

Critics of these arguments respond that, although there is a traditional type of family that, in fact, varies from culture to culture, today there are also many different kinds of nontraditional families. Among these are single-parent households, adopted families, blended families, and lesbian and gay families. It is not the type of family that makes for a good loving household, the argument goes, but the amount of love and care that exists in one.

A final objection to human cloning goes some­thing as follows: Sometimes we have a gut reaction to something we regard as abhorrent. This objec­tion is sometimes called the "yuck" objection. We are offended by the very thought of it. We cannot always give reasons for this reaction, yet we instinctively know that what we abhor is wrong. Many people seem to react to human cloning in this way. The idea of someone making a copy of them­selves or many copies of a famous star is simply bizarre, revolting, and repulsive, and these emo­tional reactions let us know that there is something quite wrong with it, even if we cannot explain fully what it is.

Any adequate response to this argument would entail an analysis of how ethical reasoning works when it works well. Emotional reactions or moral intuitions may indeed play a role in moral reason­ing. However, most philosophers would agree that adequate moral reasoning should not rely on intu­ition or emotion alone. Reflections about why one might rightly have such gut reactions are in order. People have been known to have negative gut reactions to things that, in fact, are no longer regarded as wrong—interracial marriage, for exam­ple. It is incumbent on those who assert that some­thing is wrong, most philosophers believe, that they provide rational argument and well-supported reasons to justify these beliefs and emotional reactions.

Ethical objections to human cloning (whether reproductive or therapeutic) and stem cell research also often revolve around the treatment of embryos. Some of the same arguments regarding abortion are raised regarding these practices. One novel idea is to mix together embryos from fertility clinics. In some cases, the mixture would contain both male and female embryos. They would have virtually no

Chapter 17 ■ Stem Cell Research, Cloning, and Genetic Engineering 413

chance of developing into a human being, and yet they would still produce stem cells. Thus, destroy­ing them might not be objectionable.²¹ It may also be possible to produce sources of stem cells from a human egg alone through parthenogenesis. Eggs do not halve their genetic total until late in their maturation cycle. Before that, they have a full set of genes. If they could be activated before this time and stimulated to grow, there might not be the same objection to using eggs as there has been to using early embryos made from combining sperm and egg.²² The move to prohibit destroying new embryos but permit the use of already existing stem cell lines has proved to be problematic because these have been found to be limited in number and poor in quality²³

These concerns about the protection of embryos have also moved legislators to create laws restrict­ing or prohibiting their use in research as in thera­peutic or reproductive cloning. For example, since 1978, no federal funds have been allowed for use in human embryo research, and since 1996 Congress has attached a rider to the NIH budget that would prohibit funding any research that involves the destruction of embryos. Producing embryos from which to derive stem cells would involve their destruction. No such restrictions have been placed on research using private funding, and thus several nongovernment labs have been proceeding with such work. In early 1999, the legal counsel of the Department of Health and Human Services ruled that it is within the legal guidelines to fund human stem cell research if the cells are obtained from pri­vate funds. Most recently, the members of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC)— fifteen geneticists, ethicists, and others appointed by President Clinton in 1996—voted against making such a distinction between producing and deriving the cells and simply using them. One suggestion is to use germline cells of fetuses that are already dead as a result of legal abortion. However, these cells may not be identical to stem cells derived from embryos, and deriving stem cells from this source is difficult. The National Bioethics Advisory Commission's charter expired in 2001. In its place was established the President's Council on Bioethics. This commission reported its conclusions

on human cloning in July 2002. It recommended a four-year moratorium on all types of human cloning. (See the note earlier in this chapter con­cerning the congressional bill banning human cloning.) The commission recommended that if no action is taken by Congress at the end of this period, the moratorium would lapse. As of May 2002, six states had banned cloning in one form or another, but only Michigan has banned cloning for research. California has reversed an earlier moratorium. In September 2002, the state's governor signed into law a bill that "explicitly allows research on stem cells from fetal and embryonic tissue."²⁴ The state also plans to fund such research. Some critics assert that it would be difficult to ban one type of cloning without the other. For example, if reproductive cloning were prohibited but research or therapeutic cloning were allowed, then how would one know whether cloned embryos were being used in fertility clinics? It would be impossible to distinguish them from ordinary ones. Furthermore, if there were no federal funds provided for research cloning, then there also would be no oversight. We would not know what was going on behind closed doors. Scientists also point out how essential federal research funds have been for new developments. Just how the public will continue to respond to these possibilities remains to be seen. However, we can and do generally believe it appropriate to regulate scientific research and industrial applications in other areas, and we may well consider such regula­tions appropriate for human cloning also. For exam­ple, regulations regarding consent, the protection of experimental subjects and children, and the delin­eation of family responsibilities are just some of the matters that may be appropriately regulated. Other ethical issues are raised by the use of surrogate mothers and prenatal embryo transfer and are related to social matters such as the nature of parentage and to concerns about the dangers of commercial­ization and the buying and selling of babies.²⁵

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