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An Argument Against Cloning

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Jaime Ahlberg  and
Harry Brighouse
Jaime Ahlberg
Affiliation:
University of Florida, Gainesville, FL32611-8545, USA
Harry Brighouse
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI53706, USA
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Extract

It is technically possible to clone a human being. The result of the procedure would be a human being in its own right. Given the current level of cloning technology concerning other animals there is every reason to believe that early human clones will have shorter-than-average life-spans, and will be unusually prone to disease. In addition, they would be unusually at risk of genetic defects, though they would still, probably, have lives worth living. But with experimentation and experience, seriously unequal prospects between cloned and noncloned people should erode. We shall ignore arguments about cloning that focus on the potential for harm to the fetus or resultant human being, where harm is understood solely in terms of physical and mental health. Unless the resultant people would generally have lives worth living there is no positive case for cloning, or any other form of reproduction, for that matter. If the resultant beings will generally have lives worth living there is a prima facie case for allowing cloning. We imagine the case in which the resultant beings will have lives well worth living.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 40 , Issue 4 , December 2010 , pp. 539 - 566
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2010

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References

1 We are grateful to Brian Weatherson for prompting this paper with a series of posts we disagreed with at Crooked Timber (http://www.crookestimber.org). We are grateful to him, Norman Fost, Fred Harrington, Daniel Hausman, Rob Streiffer, Joel Velasco, to participants at the Ethics of Bearing and Rearing Children conference in Cape Town, South Africa, in May 2008, and the editors of and referees for Canadian Journal of Philosophy for insightful and helpful comments on previous drafts.

2 See, for example, Brian Weatherson and Sarah, McGrath ‘Cloning and Harm’ in Taylor, James ed., Medical Ethics and Public Policy (Aldershot: Ashgate, forthcoming);Google Scholar Warnock, Mary Making Babies: Is there a Right to Have Children? (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2002);Google Scholar Harris, John On Cloning (London: Routledge 2005);Google ScholarPubMed Strong, Carson ‘Cloning and Infertility’ Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 7 (1998);CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed McCarthy, D. ‘Persons and their Copies,’ Journal of Medical Ethics 25 (1999) 98–104.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

3 Bailey, Ronald ‘What Exactly is Wrong with Cloning People?’ in The Human Cloning Debate, McGee, Glenn ed. (Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Hills Books 2002)Google Scholar

4 For an interesting argument that expands on this point, see Levy, Neil and Lotz, Mianna ‘Reproductive Cloning and a (Kind of) Genetic Fallacy,’ Bioethics 19 (2005) 232–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 For an expression of this worry, see Eisenberg, Leon ‘Would Cloned Humans Be Like Sheep?’ originally published in The New England Journal of Medicine 340 (1999) 471–5.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed Reprinted in The Human Cloning Debate, 170-83.

6 Leon Kass, ‘The Wisdom of Repugnance: Why We Should Ban the Cloning of Humans,’ The New Republic (June 2 1997) 17-26. Reprinted in The Human Cloning Debate; references are to the reprint. See 96.

7 Richard Lewontin considers and rejects a similar objection, that parents who clone would be treating their cloned children merely instrumentally. Richard Lewontin, ‘The Confusion Over Cloning,’ published originally in The New York Review of Books (1997).

8 Michael Sandel, ‘The Case Against Perfection,’ Atlantic Monthly (April 2004) 51-62

9 Kass, 93

10 See our earlier argument against genetic essentialism.

11 Robertson, John ‘Cloning as a Reproductive Right,’ excerpted from ‘Liberty, Identity, and Human Cloning,’ published originally in Texas Law Review 76 (1998) 1371–456.Google Scholar Reprinted in The Human Cloning Debate, 42-57.

12 For the purposes of this paper, we have characterized the relevant connection between a parent and child as ‘genetic’ and not ‘biological.’ The two types of connection often coincide, but they need not; a woman has a biological connection with any child she has gestated, even if she is not the child's genetic mother. Here, we set aside the concern that there may be a fundamental interest in sharing a biological connection with one's child, even if there is not a fundamental interest in sharing a genetic connection.

13 Robertson, 45

14 Ibid.

15 Robertson, 46

16 Ibid.

17 See Brighouse, Harry and Swift, Adam ‘Parents Rights and the Value of the Family,’ Ethics 117 (2006) 80–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar for an explanation of why the interest in rearing children supports a right. In Section III we will elaborate our more general understanding of interests and how very powerful interests can be right-supporting.

18 See Raz, Joseph The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1986), 181–2,Google Scholar but see also all of chapters 7, 8, and 10. See also MacCormick, Neil Legal Right and Social Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1982)Google Scholar for another version of the interests theory of rights.

19 John Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 104-15; 148-52

20 For useful recent discussions of the value of rearing children see Ferdinand, Schoeman ‘Rights of Children, Rights of Parents, and the Moral Basis of the Family,’ Ethics 91 (1980) 6–19;Google Scholar Schrag, Francis ‘Justice and the Family,’ Inquiry 19 (1976) 193–208;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Rachels, James Can Ethics Provide Answers? (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield 1997),Google Scholar ch. 11; Callan, Eamonn Creating Citizens (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1997),CrossRefGoogle Scholar ch. 6; Brennan, Samantha and Noggle, Robert ‘The Moral Status of Children: Children's Rights, Parents’ Rights and Family Justice,’ Social Theory and Practice 19 (1997) 1–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 The exception we are imagining is basically catastrophic; suppose that 90% of the child population is orphaned, and there are nevertheless an ample number of childless adults who are unwilling to raise children; forcing them to do so may be better for the children than establishing large-scale orphanages. If so, it may be justified even though it intrudes deeply on the lives of the coerced adults. But even in this catastrophe it may not be justified.

22 For example, a regime that prohibits abortion will face a larger adoptive pool than one that allows it. There may be independent reasons for prohibiting abortion, say, if it is determined to be morally wrong. If so, there can be no practical response regarding the legal permissibility of abortion because doing so would reduce the size of the adoptive pool. We have no idea about what kinds of policy responses would make a difference to the supply of potential adoptees, and even if we did there may be independent reasons for thinking that policies that reduce the size of the adoptive pool would be impermissible on unrelated grounds. Anyway, a residual supply of potential adoptees would persist no matter what policies are enacted to reduce the number.

23 Brian Weatherson and Sarah McGrath, cited above.

24 Mary Warnock, 40

25 For a skeptical look at these claims see Levy and Lotz. See also Archard, David Children, Family, and the State (Aldershot: Ashgate 2002).Google Scholar

26 See Velleman's valuable discussion of the non-identity problem in relation to adoption in ‘Family History,’ 372-5.

27 See Elshtain, Jean Bethke ‘To Clone or Not To Clone’ in Nussbaum, Martha and Sunstein, Cass eds., Clones and Clones (New York: Norton 1998) 181–9,Google Scholar esp. 187-9 for a more compact appeal for the moral desirability of adoption. For some insightful essays on the moral character of adoptive parenting see Haslanger, Sally and Witt, Charlotte eds., Adoption Matters (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 2005).Google Scholar See especially, for our purposes, chapters 3, 6, and 13.

28 Carson Strong, ‘Cloning and Infertility,’ reprinted in The Human Cloning Debate, 184-211. See 202-4.

29 Indeed, the content of the conflicts may not always be different. Whatever the plans of parents at the time of conception, in some social environments (like that of the contemporary United States) most children will not be raised exclusively by both their original parents, but in part by genetically unrelated adults who become the sexual partners of one of their parents when their parents separate. To the extent that this occurs, numerous families without adopted children already deal with negotiating non-genetically connected parent-child relationships.

30 Brighouse, and Swift, ‘Parents’ Rights and the Value of the Family’ and ‘Legitimate Parental Partiality,’ Philosophy & Public Affairs 37 (2009) 43–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 In ‘Family History’ David Velleman elaborates a fourth reason for wanting children to be reared by their biological parents; that being reared by people with whom one has a fair amount in common genetically plays a vital role in healthy identity formation and maintenance. We are skeptical that the role is as important as his argument claims but, regardless, the interest he identifies is, again, child-centered and, as he points out, does not count in favor of encouraging parents to rear their own as-yet-non-existent biological children rather than existing potential adoptees who as yet lack families. See David Velleman, ‘Family History,’ Philosophical Papers (2005) 357-78.

32 As we noted in section I, Michael Sandel takes this argument further and suggests that the possibility of excessive risk management on the part of parents spoils the parent-child relationship. While there are reasons for supporting this strengthened suggestion, our point here is only that parents do not have a right to manipulate their relationships with their children, whether or not doing so is detrimental to their dispositions as parents. See Michael Sandel, ‘The Case Against Perfection.’

33 Levy and Lotz argue for this extensively by saying, plausibly, that i) such parents are misguided about the real nature of genetic identity, and ii) that allowing cloning will reinforce such misguidedness.

34 WSL is problematic for other reasons too. For example, it makes it difficult to give an account of the intuitive difference in worth between different liberties. As Ronald Dworkin observes, most people have wanted to drive the wrong way down a one-way street when no other cars are present in their own lives, but not the freedom to use racist speech against others; yet many think that racist speech should be protected as a right, but that the government legitimately prohibits driving the wrong way, even when doing so would place no-one at risk of harm. See A Matter of Principle (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1986), ch. 8.

35 We should note that some proportion of couples who seek assisted reproduction do so not because having a genetically related child is their first preference, but in response to the barriers to, and intrusions into their personal lives involved in adopting children. This trigger for demand of assisted reproduction could be addressed by making adoption easier and less traumatic for potential adoptive parents.

36 Note that for this to be effective, the campaign would have to reach those parts of the world that produce large numbers of potential adoptees

37 For a slightly ironic discussion concerning this consequence, see the exchange between Lindsey Beyerstein and Matt Weiner, one of whom sees the consequence as objectionable, the other of whom sees it as welcome: <http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2004/09/no_really_procr.html> and <http://mattweiner.net/blog/archives/000347.html>.

38 Permissible means would include those we have mentioned, whereas impermissible means would include forcible sterilization and other forms of prior restraint. We have deliberately remained agnostic about the morality of abortion, but emphasize here that if abortion were seriously immoral then a policy of permitting or encouraging abortion would be an impermissible means for the reduction of the pool of potential adoptees.

39 Do these reasons for wanting to support the natural fertility rate extend to supporting allowing cloning? We doubt it, because we imagine that if cloning became legally available it would either be limited to a very small number of people who cannot reproduce using other forms of assistance, or almost all instances of it would replace other forms of reproduction. As we explain in the next section, it is possible, too, that its availability and that of other forms of assisted reproduction, may not affect fertility rates positively, or not very positively.

40 We assume that something like Rawls's difference principle is more important than something like Rawls's principle of fair equality of opportunity. Rawls does not think so; but see Justice as Fairness, 163, n. 44.

41 This consideration also works against the suggestion that people who desire to clone ought to be permitted to do so once they have adopted a child. While money is not the incentive in this case, the prospect of having a genetically connected child is. We should emphasize that there are good reasons for trying to ensure that parents raise children in material conditions that are not excessively challenging, and government subsidies for child-rearing in inegalitarian societies play a very important role in facilitating the success of family life.

42 It is worth noting that in many countries where IVF and AID are legal an unfairness persists, in that potential parents are required to pay much, or all, of the cost of the treatment, whereas there is no tax on conceiving the natural way. We presume that the same would be true of cloning in many countries if it were legal. Of course, the objector could insist that this unfairness be eliminated too; but if not, he or she admits that unfairness is not a decisive objection to a policy arrangement.

43 Arkansas, Florida, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, and Utah, at the time of this writing.

44 Just to be very clear, we believe that there are no powerful reasons for believing that.

45 Rachels, James Can Ethics Provide Answers? (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield 1997), 239Google Scholar