This working paper has been prepared by the staff of the President's
Council on Bioethics solely for the purpose of stimulating discussion at
the Council\'s January 2002 meeting.

[Working Paper \# 3 (Continued)]{.underline}

\* \* \*

[3b. Arguments against "Reproductive" Cloning]{.underline}

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the arguments presented in
defense of human cloning is the extent to which they have to stretch and
work to get around what appears to be an almost instinctive revulsion
against cloning human beings on the part of the public and many
scientists and decision makers. For reasons that many people have
difficulty articulating, nearly everyone agrees that they do not want to
see a cloned human being brought to term. What should we make of this
revulsion? Is it mere prejudice, born of ignorance and of the fear of
novelty? Or does it rest in some genuine insight?

Exploring and explaining this revulsion, which persists in the face of
what in many cases appear to be rigorous and internally consistent
analytical and philosophical arguments in defense of human
"reproductive" cloning, is a task that may have much to teach us about
the purpose and the proper role of bioethics in our times. For if our
revulsion rises up from deep within us, it may rest upon and express a
sense of our humanity and its meaning that we are unaccustomed to
expressing in logical, political and rhetorical terms. Making an effort
to express these ideas---these human goods---in clear, distinct and
rigorous form will help us see what is at stake in the matter of
cloning: what is at risk, what there is to defend, and why it ought to
be defended.

The arguments put forward in defense of "reproductive" cloning tend to
strike the ear at first as more familiar and congenial because they
generally address themselves to subjects we are quite used to dealing
with in our political and public life: to individual rights, to the
satisfaction of personal desires, to the exercise of human will. Modern
liberal democratic politics is especially good at thinking about these
human goods and at providing for them. Arguments against permitting
human cloning have a far less familiar ring to them, because while they
do draw on some of the most prominent and important liberal premises
(for instance by pointing to serious concerns about safety and consent,
among others) they also draw upon a rather different set of human goods,
to which our politics does not often address itself explicitly: human
dignity and worth; human bonds, both natural and social; the freedom
that can come only from certain sorts of limits on the human will; the
meaning and the power of our procreative nature and its relation to our
mortality. These are, in many ways, the highest human things, but they
are not always, and should not be always, political things; and so our
politics does not often think of them. We human individuals, however, do
think about them. They speak to us often more clearly and directly than
do the theories of individual rights and the promise of comfort and even
of health. For the most part, we are quite well able to keep these two
realms---one higher but less political, the other lower but more
immediate and practical---separate. But when the two fall into conflict,
we are challenged to prioritize among them.

The prospect of twenty-first century biotechnology forces us to think of
this, because it threatens to bring the two realms into conflict. It
does so precisely because the powers it makes possible are to be used on
the bodies and minds of human beings, and in ways that go beyond the
traditional medical goal of healing the sick. In their quest for comfort
and health, advocates of human cloning seek to give new form to human
procreation---and we must think of what that might do to all the human
goods that are connected in countless subtle ways to human procreation.
In their desire to empower human will, they seek to break the mold of
natural human limitation---and we must think of where a new standard of
human behavior and dignity might come from. In their quest for the
empowerment of individuals, they raise questions that human societies
can answer only together---and we must face these questions and consider
them carefully before we decide how we ought to proceed.

All the human goods in question---individual rights, the quest for
health and longer life, the desire for a biologically related child, the
desire for freedom, human dignity, human humility and wonder, and the
procreative character of human life---are of great importance to us; but
as biology and medicine seek out new powers, some of these goods may
come into conflict with others. It will be up to us, as individuals and
particularly as political communities, to address these conflicts, and
in doing so we must take an active role and not simply let things fall
where they may. The stakes are too high for passivity. The promise is
too great. The risks are too serious. And we must deliberate carefully
to reach the wisest judgment and to determine the best course of action.
In making this judgment, we must understand and we must articulate as
clearly as possible both sets of human goods: not only the one we are
very good at talking about, but also the other, which we rarely speak
of, but which we find impossible to ignore.

The arguments in favor of human "reproductive" cloning speak mostly,
though not exclusively, in the terms of human choice and human comfort
and health. The arguments in favor of refraining from "reproductive"
cloning and prohibiting it will speak mostly (though again certainly not
exclusively) in the terms of human dignity, human flourishing, and human
nature. In both cases, it is less the technical details of cloning that
matter, and more the meaning of "reproductive" cloning in relation to
those goods and those ideals that matter most to us all.

Opposition to human "reproductive " cloning falls into several general
categories, some of which address the more familiar questions of safety,
consent, and individual rights, but most of which focus mainly on the
larger human questions at stake in making this decision.

1\) [Safety and Health of Children and Mothers]{.underline}

The first of these is a concern raised by nearly everyone on all sides
of the cloning debate: the safety of all involved. Even most proponents
of "reproductive" cloning generally qualify their support with a caveat
about the safety of the procedure. Almost no one argues that cloning is
presently safe enough to attempt on human beings, and the example of
cloning experiments in other mammals strongly suggests that human
"reproductive" cloning is, at least for now, far too risky to attempt.
Safety concerns revolve around potential dangers to the cloned child, as
well as to the egg donor and the surrogate mother.

Risks to the cloned child must be taken especially seriously, not least
because---

unlike the risks to the egg donor and surrogate mother---they cannot be
accepted knowingly and freely by the person who will bear them. The
risks to the cloned child have at this point led nearly everyone
involved in the debate to consider cloning thoroughly unsafe. In animal
experiments to date, only approximately 5 percent of attempts to clone
have resulted in live births, and a substantial portion of those
live-born clones have suffered complications that proved fatal fairly
quickly.[^1] Longer term consequences are of course not known, since the
oldest successfully cloned mammal is only approximately five years of
age. Some medium-term consequences, including premature aging, immune
system failures, and sudden unexplained deaths, have already become
apparent in some cloned mammals.

Furthermore, there are concerns that a cell from an individual who has
lived for some years may have accumulated genetic mutations which---if
used in the cloning of a new human life---may predispose the new
individual to certain sorts of cancer and other diseases.[^2]

Along with these threats to the health and well being of the cloned
child, there appear to exist some risks to the health of the egg donor
(particularly risks to her future reproductive health caused by the
hormonal treatments required for egg donation) and risks to the health
of the surrogate mother (for instance, animal experiments suggest a
higher than average likelihood of overweight offspring, which can
adversely affect the health of the birth-mother.)

These concerns have convinced most of those involved in the field that
attempts at "reproductive" cloning at present would constitute unethical
experimentation on human subjects, and should be forbidden. These
considerations of safety were among the primary factors that led the
National Bioethics Advisory Commission to call for a prohibition of
human "reproductive" cloning in 1997, and the evidence in support of
such concerns has only grown since then.

Nonetheless, as the NBAC report also articulated, safety concerns may
well be temporary, and could prove amenable to technical solutions.[^3]
These concerns constitute a persuasive argument for a moratorium or
temporary ban; but in themselves they do not get beyond the
technicalities of cloning to the deep moral, social, and ethical issues
involved. The present Council, given its membership and its charter, may
be more inclined to consider the meaning of cloning beyond its technical
feasibility and its safety record, and to look at the more permanent
significance of cloning as an activity that reflects on those who engage
in it and on the society that permits or encourages it. It is in those
areas of inquiry that serious and permanent objections to cloning arise
with the greatest force.

# [2) Consent]{.underline}

Beyond physical safety, the prospect of "reproductive" cloning also
raises concerns about a potential violation of the rights of
individuals, particularly through a denial of the right to consent to
the use of one's body in experimentation or medical procedures.

Consent from the human clone itself is of course impossible to obtain.
It may be argued, on the one hand, that no one consents to his own
birth, so concerns about consent are misplaced when applied to the
unborn. But as George Annas and others have argued, the issue is not so
simple. For reasons having much to do with the safety concerns raised
above and the social and psychological concerns to be addressed below,
an attempt to clone a human being would expose the cloned
individual-to-be to great risks of harm, in addition to, and different
from, those accompanying other sorts of reproduction. Given the risks,
and the fact that consent cannot be obtained, the ethical choice may be
to avoid the experiment.

Against this point it might be said that the alternative to cloning is
for the cloned individual not to exist at all, and that no one would
prefer non-existence to the chance at life. Such an argument, however,
could easily come to be used as an excuse for absolutely any use and
abuse of embryonic or newborn life. Giving life to an individual does
not grant one the right to harm that individual. It is true that the
scientist cannot ask an unconceived child for permission, but this puts
a burden on the scientist, not on the child. All that the scientist can
know is that he or she is putting a newly created life at enormous risk;
and given that knowledge, the ethics of human experimentation suggest
that the best option is to avoid the procedure altogether.

Indeed, an inquiry into the purpose and meaning of consent may well
support this point. Why, after all, does society insist upon consent as
an essential principle of the ethics of scientific research? The
requirement for consent is not quite an end in itself. It exists to
protect the weak and the vulnerable, and particularly to protect them
from the powerful. It would therefore be morally questionable, at the
very least, to choose to impose potentially grave harm on an individual,
even by the very act of choosing to give them life.

A separate question of consent arises in light of the possibility that
individuals, living or dead, may be used as sources of DNA for a cloning
procedure without their permission or even their knowledge. Unlike other
forms of reproduction, including assisted reproduction and in vitro
fertilization, cloning could be carried out with DNA from individuals
who have chosen to be involved in a reproductive procedure. While an egg
or sperm donor may not consent specifically to have the egg or sperm
used in a particular reproductive procedure, the donor has knowingly
donated the sperm or egg, and thus has consented to having them used in
such procedures in general. But since, at least in theory, the nucleus
of any cell from a given individual could be inserted into an egg to
clone that individual, and since cells can be obtained illicitly with
relative ease, individuals may find themselves cloned without their
knowledge or approval, and thus essentially forced to reproduce without
their consent.

A subset of this problem involves the cloning of the deceased, who, like
the unborn, cannot provide or deny consent. Among the possible uses for
cloning suggested by proponents of human "reproductive" cloning is the
opportunity it offers for parents of a deceased child, or the family of
any deceased individual to clone that individual. Such an action, taken
without prior permission, could be a patent violation of the principles
of reproductive consent, though of course the individual whose rights
are violated would be unable to object.

In these different ways, the long-standing insistence on obtaining
consent for medical procedures, and particularly reproductive ones,
could be seriously undermined by the advent of human "reproductive"
cloning.

# [3) Eugenics and Enhancement]{.underline}

Human "reproductive" cloning could also come to be used for eugenic
purposes: that is, in an attempt to alter (with the aim of improving)
the genetic constitution of future generations. Indeed, that is the
stated purpose of some proponents of "reproductive" cloning, and has
been at the heart of much support for the concept of "reproductive"
cloning for decades. Proponents of eugenics were once far more open
regarding their intentions and their hopes to escape the uncertain
lottery of sex and reach an era of controlled and humanly directed
reproduction, which would allow future generations to suffer fewer
genetic defects and to enjoy more advantageous genotypes. In the present
debate, the case for eugenics is not made quite so openly, but it
nonetheless remains an important driving motivation for some proponents
of human cloning, and a potential use of "reproductive" cloning.

Cloning can serve the ends of eugenics either by avoiding the genetic
defects that may arise when human reproduction is left to natural
chance; or by preserving and perpetuating outstanding genetic traits. In
the future, if techniques for precise genetic engineering become
available, cloning could be useful for perpetuating the enhanced traits
created by such techniques, and for keeping the "superior" man-made
genotype free of the flaws that sexual reproduction might otherwise
introduce.

The darkest side of eugenics is of course familiar to any student of the
twentieth century. Its central place in Nazi ideology, and its brutal
and inhuman application by the Third Reich, have put that science
largely out of favor. No argument in today's cloning debate bears any
resemblance to those of Hitler's doctors. But by the same token, it is
not primarily the Nazi analogy that should lead us to reject eugenics.

It is a less dark side of eugenic science that threatens to confront us.
This side is well-intentioned but could prove at least as dangerous to
our humanity. The eugenic goal of "better" and "healthy" children
combined with modern genetic techniques threatens to blur and ultimately
eliminate the line between therapy and enhancement. Medicine is guided
by the natural standard of health. It is by this standard that we judge
who is in need of medical treatment, and what sort of treatment might be
most appropriate. The doctor's purpose is to restore a sick patient to
health. Indeed, we even practice a kind of "negative" eugenics guided by
this standard: as when parents choose to abort a fetus who has been
diagnosed with a serious genetic disease. This "negative eugenics" may
be morally problematic in itself, but it is at least a practice that is
informed by a standard of health.

The "positive" eugenics that could receive a great boost from human
"reproductive" cloning does not seek to restore human beings to natural
health when they are ill. Instead, it seeks to alter humanity, based
upon a standard of man's (or some men's) own making. Once the natural
goal of health has been blurred out of existence, medicine will come to
serve only ends designed by human will, and thus may have no limits, may
feel no constraints, and may respect no barriers. Reproduction itself
might come to serve one or another purely man-made end, and future
generations may come to be products of our artful and rational design
more than extensions of our humanity. All of this may well be guided by
what plainly seem like good intentions: to improve the next generation,
to enhance the quality of life of our descendants, to let our children
do more than we ourselves could do. But in the process, we stand to lose
the very means by which to judge the goodness or the wisdom of the
particular aims proposed by a positive eugenics. We stand to lose the
sense of what is and is not human; a set of limits on our hubris; a
standard against which to judge the legitimacy of certain human actions.
All of these, along with the specific traits and characteristics done
away with in the process of eugenic enhancement, could be lost.
"Reproductive" cloning may well contribute to these losses.

Eugenics, and cloning itself, may also contribute to an unhealthy belief
in genetic determinism, which could have profoundly negative social
consequences. As we become better able to manipulate and to control
human genotypes, we may tend to place greater importance on the
genotype, wishing to secure for our descendants every possible
advantage. To a man with a hammer, everything begins to look like a
nail. To a society armed with the power to control and change the
genome, the genome will suddenly look very much in need of control and
change. The ability to manipulate the genotype of an individual may tend
to convince us of the supreme importance of genetics in shaping an
individual, which in turn may lead us to want more control, in a
self-intensifying cycle pointing toward an increasing surrender to an
ideology of genetic determinism. Whether or not our control of the
genome actually turns out to give us much control over individuals, our
new ability may of itself be enough to lead us to place undue importance
on genetics.

It is essential to realize that many of the social concerns raised below
could result from this very attitude. An excessive focus on the
importance of the genotype would exacerbate the social and psychological
pressures to which a cloned individual may be subject.

In addition, eugenics may also open the road to a new inequality, by
which only those who can afford it can procure advantages for themselves
and their descendants into future generations. A situation in which only
the rich can grant their children high IQs, broad shoulders and long
lives would prove unbearable to a liberal democracy, and might either
lead to serious social tension or more likely to a government
entitlement to genetic enhancement and manipulation---managed by the
state.

By serving the ends of eugenics, "reproductive" cloning may open the
door to all of these various difficulties.

[4) Respect for Nature]{.underline}

Cloning also raises a number of concerns about humanity's relation with
the natural world. The precautionary principle, which informs the ideals
of the environmental movement, may have something to say to us about
cloning. It urges us to beware of the unintended consequences of
applications of human power and will---particularly over nature. Natural
systems of great complexity do not respond well to blunt human
intervention, and one can hardly think of a more complex system than
that responsible for human reproduction. This principle suggests that
geneticists should not pretend to understand the consequences of their
profound alterations of human nature, and lacking such understanding
they should not take actions so drastic as the cloning of a human child.

The ethic of environmentalism also preaches a respect for nature as we
find it, and argues that the complex structure of the natural world has
much to teach us. Such an ethic therefore disapproves of efforts aimed
at simply overcoming nature as we find it, and imposing a man-made
process over a slowly evolved natural process. It opposes the hubristic
overconfidence inherent in the cloning project, and fears that such a
project may erase the boundary between the natural and the
technological.

In addition, cloning, in the unlikely event it should become
commonplace, may diminish the diversity of the human gene-pool. Sexual
reproduction introduces unique combinations of genes into the human
gene-pool, while eugenic cloning aimed at reproducing particular
genotypes will tend to diminish that diversity, and with it the
"strength" of the species. Eugenic enhancement may thus "weaken" future
generations.

# [5) Manufacture and Commodification]{.underline}

"Reproductive" cloning could also represent an enormous step in the
direction of transforming human procreation into human manufacture.

In natural procreation, two individuals come together to give life to a
new individual as a consequence of their own being and their own
connection with one another, rather than merely of their will. They do
not design the final product, they give rise to the child of their
embodied selves, and they therefore do not exert control over the
process or the resulting child. They beget something that is in essence
like themselves; they do not make something that is in essence their
own. The product of this process, therefore, stands beside them fully as
a fellow human being, and not beneath them as a thing made by them with
only their own purposes in mind. A manufactured thing can never stand
beside its human maker as an equal, but a begotten child does stand
equally beside its parents. The natural procreative process allows human
beings---through the union of male and female---to make way for fellow
human beings, to whom they give rise, but whom they do not make. It thus
endows each new generation with the dignity and freedom enjoyed by all
that came before it.

Even most present forms of partially artificial reproduction, including
IVF, essentially imitate this natural process, and while they do begin
to introduce the characteristics of manufacture and industrial
technique, they cannot claim to control the final outcome as an artisan
might shape his artifact. The end they serve is still the same---the
birth of a child from the sexual union of seed from two progenitors.
Reproduction with the aid of such techniques therefore still at least
implicitly arises from (and gives rise to) a willingness to accept the
product of a process we do not control. In this sort of procreation,
children emerge out of the same mysterious process from which their
parents came, and therefore are not mere creatures of their parents.

Human "reproductive" cloning, and the forms of human manufacture it
might make possible, could be quite different. Here, the process would
begin with a very specific end-product in mind, and would be tailored to
produce that product. Scientists or parents would set out to produce
specific individuals for particular reasons, and the individuals might
well come to be subjected to those reasons. The procreative process
could come to be seen as a means of meeting some very specific ends, and
the resulting children would be products of a designed manufacturing
process: means to the satisfaction of a particular desire, or to some
other end. They would be means, not ends in themselves.

Things made by man stand subservient to the man who made them.
Manufactured goods are always understood to have been made to serve a
purpose, not to exist independently and freely. Scientists who clone (or
even merely breed) animals make no secret of the instrumental purposes
behind their actions---they act with specific instrumental ends in mind,
and the resulting animals are means to that preexisting end. Human
cloning threatens to introduce the same approach and the same attitudes
into human procreation.

The transformation of human procreation into human manufacture could
thus result in a radical dehumanization of the resulting children, as
well as of those who set out to clone, and by its effect on societal
attitudes also a dehumanization of everyone else. When we become able to
look upon some human beings as manufactured goods, no matter how
perfect, we may become less able to look upon any human beings as fully
independent persons, endowed with liberty and deserving of respect and
dignity.

There is also cause for concern about the dignity of the sources of "raw
material" in the cloning process, who are after all human beings
themselves. Of particular concern are the attitudes that the
industrialization of human reproduction might engender (and to some
extent are already engendering) toward egg donors. Wide-scale human
cloning depends upon the availability of large numbers of eggs, which
would need to be donated (or otherwise procured). With the introduction
of the attitudes and approaches of manufacturing into the realm of human
reproduction, women who donate (or sell) their eggs for use in cloning
could increasingly come to be seen as mere sources of raw material, and
in time may come to be pressured to donate or sell, for the sake of life
or science or progress. The attitudes of modern industrial societies
toward the sources of their raw materials are well known, and turning
human beings into such "natural resources" is a worrisome prospect.

A further concern along these lines has to do with the commercialization
of human reproduction that would almost necessarily follow from the
industrialization of cloning techniques. Manufactured objects naturally
become commodities in the marketplace, and their manufacture comes to be
guided by market principles and financial concerns. When the "products"
are human beings, the "market" could easily become a radically
dehumanizing force.

"Reproductive" cloning presents us with the potential for a market in
clones of particular outstanding individuals (as in some sense already
occurs with existing techniques when potential parents seek egg or sperm
donors with high IQs or deep blue eyes); or more generally for the
further encroachment of market principles and profit motives into the
realm of human procreation. Present techniques already point the way
toward a world of celebrity cell auctions and rent-a-womb agencies, and
the widespread use of human "reproductive" cloning might very well get
us there.

The concerns expressed here---and, indeed, throughout this critique of
cloning---do not depend on cloning becoming a very widespread practice.
On the contrary, even small scale markets, say, in celebrity cloning,
could affect far more than just the lives of those individuals who are
involved in particular transactions within them. The acceptance of such
markets by society would affect the way everyone thinks about the issues
at stake. The adoption of market terms and ideas in the arena of human
moral choices could easily blind us to genuine moral issues. The
reconceptualization of society as a system of rent-seeking, of human
life as a scarce good in demand, and of moral wrongs as mere costs,
could make us far less capable of reasoning thoughtfully about our
status and responsibilities as human beings.

In sum, human manufacture, guided by market principles, violates some
fundamental principles of human dignity and moral conduct; and
"reproductive" cloning could make such violations easier and thus more
common.

# [6) Identity and Individuality]{.underline}

The above-stated concerns about the consequences of cloning as a
manufacturing process lead into broader and more serious concerns about
the mental and emotional life and the personal and social relations of
the individual produced by a "reproductive" cloning procedure. These
concerns would apply even if cloning was only conducted on a small
scale.

The natural procreative process is uniquely capable of endowing new
human beings with a combination of rootedness and family bonds on the
one hand, and independence and individuality on the other. Our genetic
uniqueness and our genetic relatedness to others both mirror and ground
this social human truth: Each of us has a unique, never-before-enacted
life to live with a unique trajectory from birth to death; and each of
us owes our existence and our rearing to those who have come before and
who have brought us into being and taken responsibility for our
existence and our rearing. By nature, every child is tied to two
biological parents, and that child's unique genetic identity is
determined by what is essentially a chance combination of these parents'
genotypes. Each child is thus related equally and by the closest of
natural bonds to two adult human beings and yet each child is
genetically unique. Both these characteristics, and the procreative
nature of humanity from which they arise and to which they point, help
give shape to the psyche of each of us, and to the human institutions
that allow us to thrive.

Our genetic uniqueness, manifested externally in our looks and our
fingerprints and internally in our immune systems, is one source of our
sense of freedom and independence. It symbolizes our autonomy and it
endows us with a sense of possibility. Each of us knows that no one has
ever had our unique combination of natural characteristics before. We
know that no one knows all the potentialialities contained within that
combination. A cloned child, however, will live out a life shaped by a
genotype that has already lived. However much or little this may
actually mean in terms of hard scientific fact, it could mean a great
deal to that individual's experience of life. He or she may be
constantly held up to the model of the source of his or her cloned
genotype, or may (consciously and unconsciously) hold himself or herself
up to that model. He or she would be denied the opportunity to live a
life that in all respects has never been lived before, and (perhaps more
importantly) might know things about his or her own genetic destiny that
may constrain his or her range of options and sense of freedom.

It may be reasonably argued that genetic individuality as such is not an
essential human good, since identical twins share a common genotype and
seem not to be harmed by it. But this argument misses entirely the
context and environment into which a human clone would be born.
Identical twins are born together, before either one has developed and
shown what his or her potential---natural or otherwise---may be. They
are each largely free of the burden of measuring up to or even just
knowing the genetic traits of the other, since neither twin is yet known
to the world. But a clone is the twin of a person who is already (or
was) living. Moreover, he or she was cloned from that person's DNA for a
reason, and must therefore in one way or another deal with his or her
connection to that person and that reason. This would constrain the
clone's individuality or sense of self in ways that differ in kind from
the experience of identical twins. The key, again, is the cloned
individual's life as that individual experiences it, and not just the
scientific question of the extent to which genetic identity actually
shapes us.

In these ways, even though genotype is certainly not destiny, the cloned
individual and the society around him may come to place too much
importance on the genotype, because as something known it is something
which can be analyzed. By leading this individual to be judged in
relation to his genetically virtually identical twin source in a way
that others are not judged, his status as a clone could turn that origin
into a kind of destiny, and might sharply constrain his freedom and
sense of identity. It could prove very difficult for the cloned
individual to step outside the shadow of his progenitor, and to live a
truly new, unique, and free and independent life.

The cloned individual's sense of independence could also suffer because
of his status as a being made to order by another. Children conceived by
sexual reproduction (even with the aid of IVF) know that they, like all
human beings before them, entered the world as something of a surprise.
No parent knows exactly what to expect, and so every good parent is
willing to accept what comes and to welcome the children as they are.
This characteristic of human procreation encourages parents to start off
on their important task with an attitude of acceptance and humility, and
to start the new child off on its course through life as one who is
welcomed, whatever he or she turns out to be. Parents, of course, will
proceed to rear and educate their child with certain aims in mind, but
these aims tend to be moderated and informed by the need to humbly
accept the child they have begotten, as that child is. A great deal of
our sense of freedom and independence derives from this vital aspect of
our relationship with our progenitors. But the cloned child does not (or
at the very least may think he does not) share such a relationship with
his parents. The cloned child will have been created by the deliberate
design of parents or scientists, and thus his relation to others will be
fundamentally different from that of naturally conceived individuals. As
discussed above, a begotten child stands in the same relation to the
world as his parents; a created child---any kind of manufactured or
designed child---does not. He stands beneath his parents and others in a
way that children generally do not: as a human artifact designed and
constructed. This fact of his origins almost cannot help but harm the
cloned person's sense of individuality and freedom.

At the same time that our procreative origins endow us with
individuality and freedom, our natural connection to our family of
origin also binds us to the human world in ways that matter deeply.
Personal and social identity and social links of responsibility are
connected in countless ways to ties of biological kinship. The psychic
identity of the cloned individual, already troubled by a diminished
sense of individuality as mentioned above, could be much further
troubled by the utter confusion of kinship relations that would result
from the circumstances of its origins.

# [7) Family and Procreation]{.underline}

Just as the cloned individual's sense of individuality may be confused
by his origin, his connection to others, and particularly to their own
family, may become muddled as well. Moreover, this effect could be
mirrored and amplified in the effect that cloning might have on the
institution of the family, and the way in which individuals and
communities come to think of procreation.

The clone's place in the scheme of human relations will be uncertain and
confused. The usual clear designations of father and mother, sister and
brother, would be confounded. The clone would have only one genetic
parent, his or her connection to grandparents would span both one and
two generations at once, and every other family relation would be
similarly confused. Even if the child was cloned from someone who is not
a member of the family in which the child is raised, the fact would
remain (and may be known to the child) that he or she has been created
in the nearly precise genetic image of another, for some particular
reason with some particular design in mind. This is far from the way
children generally (and naturally) relate to their family of origin, and
the differences may tend to run against the grain of the social
institutions that surround the family.

It may be sensibly argued that some social arrangements already in
existence break the link between natural kin and social family
structure. A great many children, after all, are adopted, and live happy
lives in loving families in the absence of biological connections with
their parents. Some children are also conceived by artificial
insemination and various IVF techniques, and may have unusual
relationships with their genetic parents, or no relationships at all.
This is true, but it must be noted that all of these existing
arrangements attempt to emulate the model of the natural family (at
least in its arrangement of the generations), while cloning actually
runs against the grain of that model. Adopted children, like biological
children, are welcomed as they are (sometimes more so than biological
children), frequently before their adoptive parents know much about what
they are and may become. They were not conceived with some specific
predetermined end in mind, and indeed they were not conceived to be
adopted (nearly no one deliberately produces children for the purpose of
adoption.) Their connection to the parents who raise them is not
biological, but it follows closely the model of the biological family:
It is based, in most cases, on a loving union of the parents aimed at
raising up a new and unique individual whom the parents did not make but
whom they wish to love, protect, and guide. It combines the same genetic
uniqueness and the social connectivity of the biological parent-child
relationship. Nothing about the adoptive child-parent relationship
prevents the development of traditional familial bonds. The same
generally holds true for children conceived through IVF for the same
reasons.

But something about the relationship between the cloned child and the
cloning parent may indeed interfere with the development of these
traditional social bonds. The confusion created by the complicated
relationship of cloner to cloned may mean that no clear lines of
parent-child, sibling-sibling, or other familial kin relations will
develop. These vital links could be subject to serious confusion and
uncertainty, and so the model of the natural family would be very
difficult if not impossible to emulate. By breaking through the natural
boundaries between generations, cloning threatens to undo the social
links between them. A clone of oneself is a brother and a son, or a
sister and a daughter. Should you relate to him or her as parent or as
sibling? Neither relationship could take form very well under the
strains of the peculiarly muddled natural relation established by
cloning.

The point may be made thus: Existing family relationships are either
drawn from or based upon the relationships that naturally arise from the
process of human procreation. Cloning not only does not point naturally
to these relations, it actively opposes them by undermining their
foundations, especially the relationships between generations. The
cloned child's psychic health and sense of identity may well be placed
in jeopardy.

And the family, as an institution, may be harmed as well. The family, of
course, is at once a social and a natural institution, and the two
elements reinforce each other in countless subtle ways. Breaking some of
the links between them could leave the institution of the family without
a firm grounding in nature and without strong social support.

This may take form, for one thing, in the attitudes of parents toward
their roles. As stated above, parents who choose to have a child at
least tacitly acknowledge a certain humility before the procreative
process which is out of their hands. They tacitly acknowledge the limits
of their power to control, and they implicitly promise to accept their
child, whatever he or she proves to be. This humility before the hand of
procreative chance sets the parents in a certain relation to the child,
and helps set quite necessary boundaries on the power of one generation
over another. In cloning a child, on the other hand, parents seek to
exercise total control over the outcome of the reproductive process
itself. This does not mean that they completely shape their child before
it is born: After all, there is more to each of us than our genome and
our environment. But it does mean that they control and---even if they
do not---that they will be held responsible for those things that
parents have until now been forced to leave to chance, and that they
therefore do not acknowledge, with humility, the limits of their powers,
but rather they approach procreation as an exercise of their power and
will. Rather than accept whatever child they turn out to have given rise
to, these parents determine in advance what sort of child they will
accept. The resulting child is much more the product of these
expectations than a child conceived in the natural way would be. Such a
cloned child is likely to be regarded more like a possession of its
parents, or even an instrument of their will, than a normally conceived
child would be. The parents begin their child's life with an overbearing
act that must be said to border on despotism. They begin the new child's
life by restricting the new child's independence and individuality. The
family, in this way, loses something of its character as a nursery of a
novel and independent new human generation, and gains something of the
character of an instrument of the present generation. This does not mean
that the parents are ill-intentioned, but it could very well mean that
their children are less free to flourish. The character of families thus
changes in ways we may not like.

Other, more immediately concrete, troubles may confront family life as
well. The parents of a cloned child may find themselves unable to treat
a child who is the clone of someone they have known (let alone of
themselves) in the way that parents may presently treat a child
generated sexually. Such a cloned child would be born with an unnatural
and perhaps unhealthy relation to someone (past or present) in the
world, and this could make healthy family life more difficult.

In addition, the presence of human clones may over time tend to
undermine society's sense of what a family relationship means and how it
relates to nature, sex and reproduction. The distance between the
procreative nature of humanity and the social status of the family could
grow, and both may become less thoroughly grounded in one another. That
grounding, as has been discussed, is vital for both, and its diminution
could bring with it profound problems. Family relations, and social
relations in general, are founded at the deepest level on mankind's
procreative nature, and on our character as begotten and begetting
creatures. Undoing that nature and that character may tend to undo the
roots and the foundations of family structure and family life. Much
about the way we live as human beings has to do with our procreative
nature: begetting and belonging condition the way we think of our place
in the world, our place among human beings, our place in time, our
mortality. Society is structured around all of these things.

Human institutions, and particularly those (like the family) that
transcend specific times and places, are storehouses of human wisdom.
They possess in their very structure more intelligence and experience
than do the thoughts and ideas of any particular generation. Undoing
these institutions, as "reproductive" cloning may begin to do, would
very likely have far greater repercussions than we can fully
contemplate.

# [8) Impact on Society]{.underline}

These repercussions, moreover, would not be limited to the lives of
individuals and families directly affected by cloning. Indeed, the
impact of human "reproductive" cloning on society at large may be the
least appreciated, but among the most important, factors to consider in
contemplating a public policy on human cloning.

Cloning is a human activity, which affects not only those who are cloned
or who are clones, but also the entire society that allows or that
supports (and therefore that engages in) such activity---as would be the
case with a society that allows some of its members to practice slavery,
to take a most extreme example. The question before us is whether
"reproductive" cloning is an activity that we, as a society, should
engage in. In addressing this question, we must reach well beyond the
rights of individuals, and the difficulties or benefits that cloned
children or their families might encounter. The question we must face
has to do with what we, as a society, will permit ourselves to do. When
we say that "reproductive" cloning may erode our respect for the dignity
of human beings, we must say that we, as a society that engages in
cloning, would be responsible for that erosion. When we argue that vital
social institutions could be harmed, we must acknowledge that it is we,
as a society that clones, that would be harming them. We should not ask
if "reproductive" cloning is something that some people somewhere should
be permitted to do. We must ask if cloning is something that all of us
together should want to do or should allow ourselves to do. Insofar as
we permit cloning in our society, we are the cloners and the cloned,
just as we are the society affected by the process. Only when we see
that do we understand our responsibility in crafting a public policy
regarding human "reproductive" cloning.

Since we are the ones acting to clone, we must further realize that our
actions will affect us not only in what they directly do to us, but also
in the way they shape our thinking. A society that clones human beings
is a society that thinks about human beings differently than a society
that refuses to do so. We must therefore also ask ourselves how we as a
society prefer to think of human beings.

These sorts of questions are not easy for a modern liberal polity to
contend with. We are not accustomed to thinking in these terms, and we
are not comfortable using them in political discourse. But cloning
(along with the accompanying broader issues raised by contemporary
biotechnology) forces us, as few other matters do, to think this way,
because cloning is a human activity that threatens (or promises) to
affect the very nexus of human societies: the junction of human
generations. Liberal society will not and should not seek to regulate
every sort of human activity, but it cannot help but involve itself in
those that directly affect its highest and most urgent tasks: tasks like
its own perpetuation and the transmission of its ideals and way of life
to future generations. Doing nothing about such a subject is not an
option. If we as a society refrain from considering the question
entirely, we would---implicitly---be saying yes to cloning, with all
that such a statement would entail. We face the choice only of engaging
in cloning or forbidding it, and the option we select will say a lot
about us. Given the issues involved, there is no neutral ground for the
polity to hold in this particular debate.

Society exists beyond individuals, beyond generations. And among the
highest tasks of any society is the management of its relation to the
future, and the transmission of its institutions and its ideals to the
next generation. As we have seen, it is here, at this vital junction of
the generations, that cloning threatens to wreak havoc, and this
junction is insufficiently protected by the market and by private
interests. It is here that cloning poses a special challenge to society,
and it is here that politics becomes important in meeting that
challenge.

Politics becomes important because politics is the means that a free
society has at its disposal to protect its common interests, to serve
its common needs and to express its common will. There is, in modern
free societies, a very reasonable reticence to bring politics into what
is usually quite properly thought of as the very private realm of human
reproduction. This attitude is generally a healthy one, but in some
cases it is dangerously misplaced, and "reproductive" cloning is such a
case. It is so precisely because "reproductive" cloning would affect
more than individuals, and more than the private relationships at the
heart of reproductive choices. The way in which the next generation will
enter this world has everything to do with the way in which our society
will live into the future. A society that produces children through
cloning is a society that thinks about children and family and the human
condition in a certain way; and we must be given the option, as a
society, to decide if that is the way that we wish to think about these
most important matters.

\* \* \*

[^1]: For further details see Working Paper \# 2, Scientific Aspects of
    Human and Animal Cloning.

[^2]: Some further examples of these concerns about the safety of cloned
    children may be found in the article reprinted in Working Paper \#
    2, Appendix A.

[^3]: Though it must be noted that however safe animal cloning may
    become, the first attempt to clone a human being will constitute an
    extremely dangerous experiment on the cloned individual, since
    identical techniques have yielded vastly different results in
    different animal species.