Knowing how to clone a human ENABLES humans to produce more humans and what humans are able to do they usually get around to doing. But SHOULD we do it? I want to talk about some ethical concerns not usually discussed but that are seriously compromised by permitting human cloning.
I will talk about CLONING ONESELF. The run-of-the-mill sort of cloning scientists have been doing for the past 20 years makes a CLONE by ELECTROFUSING the nuclear contents of a body cell from ONE ANIMAL and the altered egg cell of ANOTHER ANIMAL. Dolly the sheep is the most recent high-profile product of this so-called "somatic cell nuclear fusion" cloning process. This method is just another way of reproducing a NEW INDIVIDUAL from previously existing INDIVIDUALS without sex. Lots of objections to this kind of cloning have been aired but they are misguided.
Two IRRELEVANT OBJECTIONS need to be dealt with immediately since they are objections to cloning in general. BUT FIRST let me say a little more about WHAT CLONES ARE and WHERE THEY COME FROM.
How do you make a clone? Fuse the nuclear part of a somatic cell with the non-nuclear part of a germ cell. A somatic cell is any cell of the embryo, fetus, child, or adult which contains a full complement of two sets of chromosomes; in contrast with a germ cell, i.e., an egg or a sperm, which contains only one set of chromosomes.
A child produced by cloning has a full double set of chromosomes just like anyone else conceived sexually. Half of its chromosomes were derived from a mother and half from a father. However, it happens that these chromosomes were passed through another individual, the CLONING DONOR, on their way to the cloned child. That donor is not the child's "parent" in any biological sense, but simply an EARLIER CHILD of the original parents. Of course this sibling may claim parenthood over its DELAYED TWIN (the one that gets cloned) especially if it raises it, but it is not obvious what legal or ethical principle would compel us to recognize that claim.
So where are the clones? They're already here. TWINS that develop from a single fertilized egg cell that splits into multiple embryos are genetically identical organisms; they are called MONOZYGOTIC twins. All GENETICALLY IDENTICAL ORGANISMS ARE CLONES. So human monozygotic TWINS ARE CLONES. One-third of all twins in humans are identical. (All [monozygotic] twins are clones, but not all clones are twins, some are triplets or quadruplets (they occur regularly among armadillos and amphibians) and some are parts of larger colonial organisms like sea sponges and corals.)
Look at human clones this way: CLONES ARE NON-CONCURRENT TWINS, OR IDENTICAL TWINS OF DIFFERENT AGES. A delayed twin develops from the same genetic stuff as the earlier twin. BUT under the influence of a variety of other factors while in the womb (poor nutrition, exposure to alcohol, drugs or even stress hormones) dramatic differences in physical and mental development emerge. So if you get yourself cloned, the cloned person is a full sister or brother. Now the big question is this: Would you use your sibling for spare parts?
We probably should not let you. ALL TWINS ARE PERSONS, so all clones are persons, and therefore clones have all the rights and responsibilities every other person has regardless of origin or manner of conception. Using clones for spare parts or sending them to war would be just as unethical as using ordinary people for all the same reasons. Why should we feel any better (or worse) about clones used for similar selfish human ends?
LEWONTIN: In fact, IDENTICAL TWINS ARE GENETICALLY MORE IDENTICAL THAN A CLONED ORGANISM IS TO ITS DONOR. All the biologically inherited information is not carried in the genes of a cell's nucleus. A very small number of genes, sixty out of about 100,000, are carried by mitochondria outide the cell's nucleus. These mitochondrial genes specify essential enzyme proteins, and defects in these genes can lead to a variety of disorders. The importance of this point for cloning is that the egg cell that has had its nucleus removed to make way for the genes of a donor cell has not had its mitochondria removed. The result of the cell fusion that will give rise to the cloned embryo is then a mixture of mitochondrial genes from the donor and the recipient. Thus, it is not, strictly speaking, a perfect genetic clone of the donor organism. Identical twins, however, are the result of the splitting of a fertilized egg and have the same mitochondria as well as the same nucleus.
"CLONING PRODUCES UNDESIRABLE RESULTS"
Objections to any form of non-sexual human reproduction degenerate into concerns about WHETHER CLONING IS NATURAL or how current technical difficulties in the process usually yield an UNDESIRABLE OUTCOME. Take the second objection first: Thoughtful people (and presidents) say: Since cloning techniques usually produce defective embryos, we should not allow cloning. So far, this is true: Cloning in most mammalian species makes creatures that can't breathe on their own or are born with insides on their outside; few embryos survive and those that do have very short life-spans. BUT these are merely TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES. At best these concerns give us A GOOD REASON NOT TO CLONE A HUMAN NOW or to proceed with every caution when we do, but this argument does not give us a good reason to never do it. And any form of reproduction which eventually extends the range of ways humans can make viable copies of themselves is going to be good for humanity and the planet anyhow. You can't have too many people.
"CLONING IS UNATURAL"
Here is the second objection: Since cloning humans does not occur in nature without human provocation, people argue, the cloning PROCESS IS UNNATURAL and so should not be permitted. If God had wanted us to clone ourselves God would have made clonal reproduction much easier and more spontaneous. BUT this isn't a successful line of argument either. People accomplish all sorts of ends unnaturally. We routinely travel using planes, trains, and automobiles to get where we are going. Antibiotics and vaccines are unnaturally synthesized and administered by humans for the community good. Infertility clinics enable otherwise infertile couples to conceive. All of these technological solutions are artifical. And yet all rely upon UNNATURAL PROCEDURES for getting people what they want. CLONING IS UNNATURAL, but it can't be wrong for this reason.
Now let's consider TWO RELEVANT but controversial human rights.
Some people condemn the cloning of an adult human on the grounds that it violates moral or human rights. Here are TWO possible rights we might want to grant that all persons deserve:
(1) Every person has a right to a UNIQUE IDENTITY, and
(2) Every person has a right to an OPEN FUTURE.
Both ALLEGED RIGHTS pertain to what we (or anybody else for that matter) have a RIGHT TO KNOW.
(1) If I have a right to a unique identity, then I have a right to know that there have been no other copies of myself running around.
(2) If you have a right to an open future, then you not only have a right to remain ignorant about what your future holds but no one else has a right to know anything about whatever physical or psychological problems lurk in your future.
Now the issue I will discuss is WHETHER CLONING VIOLATES EITHER OF THESE RIGHTS. My concern here will be with the woman who wants a child but finds no worthwhile male with whom to mate. She goes to the cloning clinic and gets herself cloned using her egg cell and one of her own body cells. This is technically doable but morally wrong, people say, because SHE DEPRIVES THE CLONED PERSON SHE MAKES OF THE RIGHT TO BE GENETICALLY UNIQUE.
For human cloning to violate a right to a unique identity, the relevant sense of identity would have to be GENETIC IDENTITY. You and I have a genetically unique identity because we have an UNREPEATED (or never before realized) genetic constitution. Many argue that cloned humans could never have such a right. If every person has this right and any human clone is a person, then every human clone has a right to be unique too, but alas, THE CLONE CAN ONLY BE A COPY OF ITS ORIGINAL.
Of course, PEOPLE (cloned or otherwise conceived) can FEEL UNIQUE, but how unique are you when you are just a perfect genetic copy of yet another self-absorbed parent who withheld from you the precious option of being genetically unique? Would you rather be just one OF A KIND (namely that cloned person) or truly unique in the fullest "there will never be another one like me" sense? Clearly, any person who is a clone does not have this right, thus the process of cloning humans makes it impossible for a cloned person to be a unique person. Ordinary people conceived and grown in utero the old-fashioned way get to be genetically recombined humans but clones do not: a clone is stuck with the exact same genetic make-up as its parent, warts and all. The parent got to be unique but the cloned kid gets to be the same genetical thing all over again.
CLONES IN HUMANS OCCUR NATURALLY BUT UNINTENTIONALLY. All cases of identical (monozygotic) twins violate the alleged right to be unique, yet no one claims in such cases that the moral or human rights of either twin have been violated by the other since they were not deliberately produced. Twins are genetically the same but neither twin intentionally brings about the other, so even though identical twins are not each unique, it is not their fault that neither gets to be unique.
NATURALLY OCCURING CLONES (identical twins) do occur more frequently when couples use infertility drugs, but such drugs only increase the probability of having twins, and are not intended to produce twins. Now, if such drugs WERE administered successfully FOR THE PURPOSE OF PRODUCING IDENTICAL TWINS and twins were produced, then the PARENTS WOULD BE GUILTY of depriving the twins of unique identities and the physicians and technicians involved would be ACCOMPLICES.
The self-reproductive activites of an earlier twin directly compromises the genetic diversity of the later twin. And this just doesn't seem fair. Cloning oneself is really a form of self-love, not brotherly love because it is a deliberate form of reproduction that robs the child produced of a fuller individuality. One's intention makes all the difference.
Some deliberate human actions violate the rights of others, but outcomes of such actions are not rights violations if those outcomes result from natural causes. For example, if Eve deliberately strikes Adam on the head so hard as to cause his death, Eve violates Adam's RIGHT NOT TO BE KILLED. But if lightning strikes Adam dead, causing his death, then his RIGHT NOT TO BE KILLED has not been violated. [Acts of God do not violate our rights; God gives us what we deserve.]
ANY CLONE loses its right to a unique identity the moment its earlier twin DECIDES to copy herself.
EVEN IF they start from copies of the same genes, CLONES or monozygous twins occupy different places in spacetime and each has a different story. They originate from the same basic genetic stuff, but the expression and outcome of that genetic start diverges from the moment an embryo splits.
Does having the same genetic constitution as another person undermine your unique qualitative identity? Are we the products of nature or nurture? The answer to both questions is: YES. We are the products of our genetic nature AND THE ENVIRONMENT within which we are raised. Some people believe naively that a person's genes completely and decisively determine everything about that person, their past, their present and their future. That is, all of your other non-genetic features and properties, together with your entire history or biography WILL INEVITABLY CONSTITUTE YOUR LIFE.
But there is just no rational philosophical or scientific reason whatever to believe "biology is destiny." TWINS ARE EVIDENCE OF THIS. Twins' psychological and personal characteristics are quite similar, but differences in their personalities develop over time together with differences in their life-histories, personal relationships, and life-choices. This is true of identical twins raised together, and the differences are still greater in the cases of identical twins raised apart; sharing an identical genome does not prevent twins from each developing a distinct and unique personal identity of their own.
Although CONCURRENT TWINS begin their lives with the same genetic inheritance, they also begin their biographies at the same time, and so remain ignorant about what the other (who shares the same genome) will become by his or her choices made throughout his or her life. To whatever extent one's genome determines one's future, each regular twin begins ignorant of what their future will be and so remains mosty free to choose a range of futures, as free to construct a particular future from among open alternatives as are persons who do not have a twin. Ignorance of the effect of one's genome on one's future is necessary for the spontaneous, free, and authentic construction of a life and oneself. But the second non-current twin does not have this sort of freedom.
A LATER DELAYED TWIN created by human cloning knows, or at least believes she knows, too much about herself. There is already in the world another person, one's earlier twin, who from the same genetic starting point has made life choices that are still in the later twin's future. A version of the clone's life has already been lived and played out by another.
Further, IF SHE KNOWS already how a life with the exact same genetic constitution she labors under has gone, SO DO OTHER PEOPLE. Her privacy is seriously compromised. Medical personnel, family members, insurance agents, potential employers and mates react according to the reliable expectation that you could be like your older sibling. Thus, the later twin will lose the spontaneity of authentically creating and becoming her own self. It is tyrannical for the earlier twin to determine another's future so much in this way. And even if it is a mistake to believe the crude view that "genes dictate what we will be" genes do influence what we can become and what other people will think of us, not to mentin what we think of ourselves. What is important for one's experience of freedom and the ability to create a life for oneself is whether one thinks one's future is open, and so still to be determined by one's own choices.
A later twin might grant that he is not determined to follow in his earlier twin's footsteps, nevertheless the earlier twin's life would always haunt him, standing as an undue influence on his life, and shaping it in ways to which others' lives are not vulnerable. People with older all-star athletic siblings understand this already.
Well, this concern is legitimate but the assumption that having the same genome as her earlier twin unduly restricts her freedom to have a different life is problematic. A family environment also shapes a child's development. A younger sibling (twin or not) lives in the shadow of an older sibling raised in that same family but the younger twin or sibling might benefit by being able to learn from the older twin's or sibling's mistakes. This knowledge is also an advantage. Further, if I know my earlier twin develops alcoholism or diabetes or chronic depression because of a strong genetic predisposition, I can adjust my lifestyle accordingly. I will drink less, watch my sugar intake, and pop Prozac like I do vitamins.
Human clones are already here. About 30 genetic human clones (IDENTICAL TWINS) are born every day of the year in the United States alone. If you want to know whether cloning robs some future persons of a unique identity just look at the genuine differences among adult twins we know and love.
In the end, any moral or human right to a UNIQUE GENETIC IDENTITY or to IGNORANCE AND AN OPEN FUTURE our clones might enjoy would be violated by cloning oneself. But I see a net gain here; as a clone, the more one knows, the more careful and creative one can be. This is a trade-off worth living with. I am not merely what I am genetically, I am ultimately what I do. I choose my path, I choose to stay on the path. This is how I will have been unique. Therein lies the vital difference.