Reproductive Cloning
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.
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.
