1. Cloning Xeroxes a person.
Cloning merely re-creates the genes of the ancestor, not what he has
learned or experienced. Technically, it re-creates the genotype, not
the phenotype. (Even at that, only 99% of those genes get re-created
because 1% of such a child's genes would come from those in the egg -
mitochondrial DNA). Conventional wisdom holds that about half of who
we are comes from our genes, the other half, from the environment.
Cloning cannot re-create what in us came from the environment; it also
cannot re-create memories. The false belief that cloning recreates a
person stems in part from the common, current false belief in
simplistic, genetic reductionism, i. e., that a person really is just
determined by his genes. No reputable geneticist or psychologist
believes this.
2. Human cloning is replication or making children into
commodities.
Opponents of cloning often use these words to beg the question, to
assume that children created by parents by a new method would not be
loved. Similar things were said about "test tube" babies,
who turned out to be some of the most-wanted, most-loved babies ever
created in human history.
Indeed, the opposite is true: evolution has created us with sex drives
such that, if we do not carefully use contraception, children occur.
Because children get created this way without being wanted, sexual
reproduction is more likely to create unwanted, and hence possibly
unloved, children than human cloning.
Lawyers opposing cloning have a special reason for using these
pejorative words. If cloning is just a new form of human reproduction,
then it is Constitutionally protected from interference by the state.
Several Supreme Court decisions declare that all forms of human
reproduction, including the right not to reproduce, cannot be abridged
by government.
Use of words such as "replication" and "commodification"
also assumes artificial wombs or commercial motives; about these
fallacies, see below.
3. Human cloning reduces biological diversity.
Population genetics says otherwise. Six billion people now exist, soon
to be eight billion, and most of them reproduce. Cloning requires in
vitro fertilization, which is expensive and inefficient, with only a
20% success rate. Since 1978, at most a half million babies have been
produced this way, or at most, one out of 12,000 babies.
Over decades and with such great numbers, populations follow the Law
of Regression to the Mean. This means that, even if someone tried to
create a superior race by cloning, it would fail, because cloned
people would have children with non-cloned people, and resulting
genetic hybrids would soon be normalized.
Cloning is simply a tool. It could be used with the motive of creating
uniformity (but would fail, because of above), or it be used for the
opposite reason, to try to increase diversity (which would also fail,
for the same reason).
4. People created by cloning would be less ensouled than normal
humans, or would be sub-human.
A human who had the same number of chromosomes as a child created
sexually, who was gestated by a woman, and who talked, felt, and spoke
as any other human, would ethically be human and a person. It is by
now a principle of ethics that the origins of a person, be it from
mixed-race parents, unmarried parents, in vitro fertilization, or a
gay male couple hiring a surrogate mother, do not affect the
personhood of the child born. The same would be true of a child
created by cloning (who, of course, has to be gestated for nine months
by a woman).
Every deviation from normal reproduction has always been faced with
this fear. Children greeted by sperm donation, in vitro fertilization,
and surrogate motherhood were predicted to be less-than-human, but
were not.
A variation predicts that while, in fact, they will not be
less-than-human, people will treat them this way and hence, such
children will harmed. This objection reifies prejudice and makes it an
ethical justification, which it is wrong to do. The correct response
to prejudice is to expose it for what it is, combat it with reason and
with evidence, not validate it as an ethical reason.
5. People created by cloning could be used for spare organs for
normal humans.
Nothing could be done to a person created by cloning that right now
could not be done to your brother or to a person's twin. The U. S.
Constitution strongly implies that once a human fetus is outside the
womb and alive, he has rights. Decisions backing this up give him
rights to inherit property, rights not to suffer discrimination
because of disability, and rights to U. S. citizenship.
A variation of this myth assumes that a dictator could make cloned
humans into special SWAT teams or suicidal bombers. But nothing about
originating people this way gives anyone any special power over the
resulting humans, who would have free will. Besides, if a dictator
wants to create such assassins, he need not wait for cloning but can
take orphans and try to indoctrinate them now in isolated camps.
6. All people created from the same genotype would be raised in
batches and share secret empathy or communication.
Pure science fiction. If I wanted to recreate the genotype of my funny
Uncle Harry, why would my wife want to gestate 5 or 6 other babies at
the same time? Indeed, we now know that the womb cannot support more
than 2-3 fetuses without creating a likely disability in one.
Guidelines now call for no more than two embryos to be introduced by
in vitro fertilization, which of course is required to use cloning.
Such assumptions about cloned humans being created in batches are
linked to nightmarish science fiction scenarios where humane society
has been destroyed and where industrialized machines have taken over
human reproduction. But this is just someone's nightmare, not facts
upon which to base state and federal laws.
7. Scientists who work on human cloning are evil or motivated by
bad motives.
The stuff of Hollywood and scary writers. Scientists are just people.
Most of them have kids of their own and care a lot for kids. No one
wants to bring a handicapped child into the world. Movies and novels
never portray life scientists with sympathy. This anti-science
prejudice started with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and continues with
nefarious scientists working for the Government on The X Files.
People who call themselves scientists and grandstand for television,
such as Richard Seed and Brigette Boisselier of the Raelians, are not
real scientists but people who use the aura of science to gain
attention. Real scientists don't spend all their time flying around
the world to be on TV but stay at home in their clinics doing their
work.
8. Babies created by cloning could be grown in artificial wombs.
Nope, sorry. Medicine has been trying for fifty years to create an
artificial womb, but has never come close to succeeding. Indeed,
controversial experiments in 1973 on live-born fetuses in studying
artificial wombs effectively shut down such research.
Finally, if anything like such wombs existed, we could save premature
babies who haven't developed lung function, but unfortunately, we
still can't - premature babies who can't breathe at all die. Thus, any
human baby still needs a human woman to gestate him for at least six
months, and to be healthy, nine months. This puts the lie to many
science fiction stories and to many predictions about cloning and
industrial reproduction.
9. Only selfish people want to create a child by cloning.
First, this assumes that ordinary people don't create children for
selfish reasons, such as a desire to have someone take care of them in
old age, a desire to see part of themselves continue after death,
and/or the desire to leave their estate to someone. Many people are
hypocritical or deceived about why they came to have children. Very
few people just decide that they want to bring more joy into the
world, and hence create a child to raise and support for life as an
end-in-himself. Let's be honest here. Second, a couple using cloning
need not create a copy of one of them. As said above, Uncle Harry
could be a prime candidate.
On the other hand, if a couple chooses a famous person, critics accuse
them of creating designer babies. Either way, they can't win: if they
re-create one of their genotypes, they are narcissistic; if they
choose someone else's genes, they're guilty of creating designer
babies.
In general, why should a couple using cloning have a higher
justification required of them than a couple using sexual
reproduction? If we ask: what counts as a good reason for creating a
child, then why should cloning have any special test that is not
required for sexual reproduction? Indeed, and more generally, what
right does government have to require, or judge, any couple's reasons
for having a child, even if they are seen by others to be selfish?
Couples desiring to use cloning should not bear an undue burden of
justification.
10. Human cloning is inherently evil: it can only be used for bad
purposes by bad people.
No, it's just a tool, just another way to create a family. A long
legacy in science fiction novels and movies make the word
"cloning" so fraught with bad connotations that it can
hardly be used in any discussion that purports to be impartial. It is
like discussing equal rights for women by starting to discuss whether
"the chicks" would fare better with equal rights. To most
people, "cloning" implies selfish parents, crazy scientists,
and out-of- control technology, so a fair discussion using this word
isn't possible. Perhaps the phrase, "somatic cell nuclear
transplantation" is better, even if it's a scientific mouthful.
So if we shouldn't call a person created by cloning, a
"clone," what should we call him? Answer: a person.
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