Posted on 03/09/2006 6:05:17 AM PST by Mr. Silverback
In recent years, we have heard a lot of arguments in favor of therapeutic cloning, that is, cloning humans for medical purposes only. Reproductive cloning that would result in live births, we’re told, is something no one wants. And so lawmakers claim that the government ought to ban reproductive cloning but allow—even encourage—therapeutic cloning, as if anyone could control what’s done with the clone once produced.
But if no one is interested in reproductive cloning, how do we explain a recent book by Santa Clara University Law School professor Kerry Lynn Macintosh? In "Illegal Beings: Human Clones and the Law," Macintosh argues that opponents of human reproductive cloning are bigots, and she compares anti-cloning laws to anti-miscegenation laws that forbade blacks and whites from marrying.
Just as those laws were designed to keep mixed-race babies from being born, anti-cloning laws show prejudice against another group of possible babies: human clones.
Macintosh believes that whether or not reproductive cloning is banned, some scientist somewhere will go ahead with it anyway. (And on that score, I’m afraid, she is right.) In the meantime, she argues, a ban on cloning will have helped build prejudice against clones. Thus, the human clones who are born will face a society that treats them as “a suspect class” and routinely discriminates against them. “It is human nature to fear that which is dangerous and to hate that which we fear,” she explains. “Unfortunately, that includes human clones.”
Well, Macintosh’s logic is fundamentally flawed. She doesn’t deal with the most basic objection: You cannot argue that we must legally be allowed to clone human beings on the basis that they will be treated badly if they are illegally created. The first question is whether it’s right or wrong to create them in the first place.
Is it wrong? Macintosh tries hard to prove that it isn’t, but she fails to address troubling questions.
For example, she doesn’t deal with the fact that human clones are actually not their parents’ children. A clone would be the genetic twin of the person from whom he or she was cloned. Imagine how this would undermine family relationships. But Macintosh argues, “Families built through [current] assisted reproductive technologies are stable and loving.” That’s no comparison at all. Families developed through current reproductive technologies don’t result in an adult raising his or her own sibling as if that sibling were an offspring.
Macintosh also ignores what this will do to children who are manufactured this way. As my colleague Nigel Cameron at the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity told PBS, “We’re moving into a whole redefinition of the way in which children and parents relate, because children become people whom we can design, rather than if they just come to us as gifts. . . . We’re talking about children who are also consumer products.”
Now, we may say this is much ado about nothing: Nobody is going to clone humans. Oh, yeah? A generation ago, folks said gays could not get marriage rights. All radical social movements start the same way—generally, as here, arguing on the grounds of discrimination. That’s why a ban on all human cloning is urgently needed. Otherwise, the lives that will be devalued will not only be the clones’, but ours, as well.
Is it leftist arrogance that makes them think their ideas are so fantastic that only bigots could object, or is this just the only argument they've got left?
I think Colson's "raising a sibling" argument is pretty weak, but Cameron's "consumer products" argument is not only strong logic, but chilling.
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Before this becomes illegal, I'd like to state that I'm clonophobic and proud of it. (Although I must confess that I have a sneaky affection for that strange little guy who follows Dr. Mephisto around in South Park.)
Okay, well, doh. And, Ms. Macintosh, this is a bad thing why??
Exactly.
Anyone else see the irony of having the people who support the aborting of babies conceived by people being the same people who support the birth of babies conceived in a test tube?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0216216/
What about The Sixth Day?
Human cloning will inevitably happen somewhere like China and Americans will happily finance it. See, if you clone yourself then you will have "spare parts" available for transplant that are genetically 'yours' and thus, immune to transplant rejection. The movie "The Island" (a remake of "The Clonus Horror") was not far off in this.
I agree. Many children have been reared by older siblings, when the parents were dead, in prison, ill, in the Army, etc. (It's less likely today than in the past for a baby to have an adult sibling, but it still happens.)
The real arguments against reproductive cloning also apply to other forms of artificial reproduction, and many commentators just don't want to go there.
Sounds like alarmism;
A)Any clones would be children, it would take years before any viable parts could be harvested. In the Island, a fictional movie, they developed a mehtod to clone humans as adults.
B)What is far more likely is the growing of human parts in animals.
When the first humann clones arrive, who knows how they will be treated, I'm sure people will label them as monsters.
We could be sitting next to a clone on the bus and never know it.
I don't think it will happen anytime soon. Scientists are far away from creating a viable human clone.
I see it. Of course, in a way it isn't irony at all, just two different ways of giving God the finger.
Though I'm sure it doesn't affect my analysis of Colson's point, I guess I should note that my wife was 13 when her parents died, and was raised by adult siblings. She turned out just fine.
I doubt it. The only reason to regard a clone as a monster is if you regard the dumbass they're cloned from as a monster.
We'll see. History is filled with all sorts of stuff. People have been labled monsters for far less than their genes.
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