[donaldscrankshaw] Donald: Reproductive Cloning

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Posted by Donald:
Reproductive Cloning
http://www.donaldscrankshaw.com/posts/1181272827.shtml


   So the house has passed a law which bans cloning, except that what it
   really bans is reproductive cloning, not cloning for destruction. This
   is, of course, the opposite of what we should want.
   While I consider cloning for destruction (also called therapeutic
   cloning) to be abhorrent, I don't have the same moral objection to
   cloning for reproduction: creating a living human being who is a clone
   of another. I would argue that it is not inherently wrong to produce a
   human being who is the genetic duplicate of another. An identical
   twin, for example, is genetically the same as another person. However,
   I'm hard pressed to think of a reason to do so which is not immoral.
   It may be that I am nitpicking here. Let's say that the technology has
   progressed to the point where it is relatively easy to produce a human
   clone, without any of the nasty health issues that clones usually
   suffer these days. Why would you want to do so? Cloning, by
   definition, produces a person who is nearly the same as another
   person, so barring extraordinary circumstances, that's the reason why
   you would use it. There are many reasons for doing so, most of them
   obviously wrong. For example, you may want to produce a clone so that
   you can harvest his organs to save the original. You may want to
   reproduce a loved one, so you have, in some sense, his companionship
   again. You may want to reproduce one of the great scientists or
   political leaders of the previous generation. You may want to test
   that nature vs. nurture hypothesis. In none of these reasons are you
   valuing the clone as a person in and of himself: in every case, you
   assign value to the original, and the clone's status is second class.
   So my objection for cloning for reproduction is not opposition to
   creating a clone, but rather that the motivation for doing so devalues
   the life and dignity of the clone. That said, plenty of children
   throughout history have been produced for the wrong reasons. We do not
   try to regulate how or why children are produced. So do objections to
   every imaginable motivation for human cloning constitute sufficient
   reason to ban an action which in itself is not objectionable? Perhaps
   it is worthwhile to ban an act which can only conceivably come from
   bad motives, but I readily admit that I cannot imagine every possible
   motive. Does banning the act of cloning further devalue those clones
   who may be produced illegally?
   I don't really know the answers to these questions, I'll admit.