An Argument Against Cloning

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 non-cloned 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.

Suppose, then, that we had already reached the stage at which human cloning was safe in this sense. Would there be any reason to disallow it? We share the dissatisfaction of defenders of legalizing cloning with most of the standard arguments against cloning.² But we believe that the pro-cloning arguments are also problematic, and fail to deal with a potentially important objection. In Section I of this paper we shall briefly explain our dissatisfaction with the standard anti-cloning arguments. In Section II we shall criticize the claim that there is a right to clone when that is either the only feasible, or simply the most efficient way, for someone to reproduce. In Section III we shall build on the critique developed in Section II to develop an anti-cloning argument that we think has more power than those surveyed in part one. We do not claim that cloning is wrong, but that making it available to people might lead to worse consequences than prohibiting it, and that since there is no right to clone it is appropriate to take these consequences into account when considering whether to prohibit it. We should emphasize that although our argument provides a powerful reason for prohibiting cloning even if cloning were completely safe, we are open to the possibility that other reasons in favor of allowing cloning might outweigh our reason against. In section 4, we consider two objections to our argument. Our concluding comments contain reflection on the methodological issues raised by the paper.

I The Failed Case Against Cloning

Note that, in order to justify prohibition of cloning without having to take into account any possible benefits it might have, arguments have to establish that it is very seriously wrong. While some of the arguments we have seen against cloning may suggest that it constitutes, or would result in, something bad, none comes close to establishing a serious enough wrong to justify prohibition in all circumstances.

First, consider the argument that because clones and their genetic predecessors lack unique genetic codes, cloning undermines individuality and thus, personal dignity. We doubt that this argument has any weight at all. The genetic essentialism on which this argument rests is false; it is unable to account for the vast influence that environmental factors have on individual development.

For example, though most sets of monozygotic twins share much of their nurturing environment, no twin will have exactly the nurturing environment of her genetically identical sibling. Similarly, clones would be raised in a different nurturing environment from those who share their genotype and would normally have the added environmental variation of being raised a generation later than their genetic predecessors. Further, clones would have a different host egg and birth mother than their genetic predecessors. As Ronald Bailey notes, this 'maternal factor' ensures that the clone will not be a mere 'carbon copy' of its predecessor.³ The fact of a shared genetic code does not alone threaten individuality or dignity...