First of all, please stop refering to children with birth defects as “monsters”. They are not monsters, they are human beings. If you suffered a crippling disease would that turn you into a monster? Please.
Second, those of you who advocate headless clone ranching. Have you stopped for a second to consider–not the morality–but the practicality of this procedure? Consider for a moment the cost. How much does it cost to maintain someone in intensive care for years, on the off chance you might need a transplant? A person without a brain is going to require 24 hour intensive care. They are going to be lying in a hospital bed, hooked up to catheters, IVs, feeding tubes, and monitors from the first day of their lives.
How are you going to pay for all this? How many nurses and doctors are going to find this kind of work rewarding…intensive care for people that are going to be killed at your whim? I can’t imagine many people would chose to do this.
And where are you going to find the women who are willing to carry these headless babies to term? Uterine replicators are science fiction, we wouldn’t even know where to begin. You can’t grow babies in a tank. So you are going to have to find someone willing to carry a baby for 9 months, merely to create a THING. Yes, there are women who are willing to be surrogate mothers, but most of them do so because they are helping to create a human baby, not a tissue culture. Do you know any woman who would do this? How much would you have to pay them?
And where are you going to find doctors willing to pith a growing baby at the embryo stage? The embryo is growing and dividing…what kind of doctor is going to destroy an embryo’s brain?
Headless clone ranching is clearly immoral. However, even if you all don’t agree, it doesn’t matter, because the PRACTICAL barriers are so great. And if we reach the point where we can grow headless babies in tanks, it seems pretty certain that we could grow whole organs. Headless clone ranching may be practical for Third-world dictators or a small number of ruthless and amoral businessmen, but it will never be practical for a normal person. So can be please stop worrying about it, or looking forward to it?
Now, how about creating circus freaks? Listen people, this is similar to the quandry posed by genetic engineering. And there is a very simple ethical principle that we can follow here. The trouble with genetic engineering is that the person on whom the procedure is performed–the baby–doesn’t exist yet. And so therefore it cannot either consent or decline the procedure. But, we perform medical procedures on children currently.
We allow parents to make medical decisions for children right now. But there are limits. You can’t take your child to the doctor and ask the doctor to amputate the child’s limbs, or give them fur, or mutilate them. Any doctor that performs surgery on a child to turn them into a circus freak will be disbarred, and face criminal charges, even if the parents authorize it. Any medical procedure on a person, even a minor child, must be done for the benefit of that person. Therefore, any genetic engineering–or human/animal hybridizing–must be done FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE PERSON BEING MODIFIED. Turning a person into a circus freak through genetic engineering is wrong, for the same reason that turning a person into a circus freak via surgery is wrong–unless the person can give informed consent.
We can imply consent for many procedures–curing genetic disease, even enhancing health, strength, or intelligence. But we cannot imply consent for turning a baby into a natural slave, or giving them sub-human intelligence, or deforming them. The argument that since a deformed person has a right to life, we therefore have an obligation to create deformed people is laughable. The simple standard is that if a reasonable person would consent to have the procedure performed upon themeselves, then it would be ethical for the parents of the baby to have the procedure performed. And we can discount people who WANT to be circus freaks as unreasonable. Perhaps someday in the future, everyone will want long green tendrils. Until then, it would be immoral and illegal for you to modify a baby to have long green tendrils.
Now, on to cloning healthy babies. Obviously, cloning simply creates a human baby, with all the legal protections that any other human baby would have. But, who is the parent of the clone? Well, consider this. We already have children of uncertain parentage. They are adopted children. If a couple, or even a single person, has a clone created, and takes the baby home and raises the baby, then they are the parent of that baby. When the birth certificate is written, the parents are listed. Those are the parents of the baby, no matter who the genetic donor is.
The doctor is not the parent, the genetic donor’s parents are not the parents, the nurses are not the parents, no corporation is the parent. We already allow surrogate motherhood. We allow egg donation. We allow sperm donation. We allow the combination of the three procedures. We allow adoption. If a couple got a donated egg, donated sperm, fertilized the egg via IVF, then hired a surrogate mother to carry the baby to term, they are still the parents of the baby. Not the egg donor, not the sperm donor, not the surrogate mother. The genetic identity of the child is irrelevant.
Now, a question could come if the genetic donor did not consent to the genetic donation…suppose someone stole Michael Jordan’s tissue sample. Well, we already have situtations that are similar. One standard is to go by the best interests of the child. If someone stole the genetic sample and used it to create a cloned child, then that could be evidence that they would be an unfit parent. And so their parental rights could be terminated, and the baby placed up for adoption.
Remember, adoption is key here. Genetic parents can have their rights terminated by the state. And un-related people can be designated parents of the child by the state. So the genetic identity of the baby need not determine who has to raise the baby, or who has to pay child support.
But what about the idea that we “own” our genome? But consider this. My sisters are clones. Naturally occuring clones, but clones. Now, suppose one of my sisters agrees to donate eggs to an infertile couple. Does my other sister have the right to veto that decision? After all, those eggs are genetically the same as her eggs. Harvesting the gametes of an identical twin is the same as harvesting the gametes of the other. But we can clearly see that my sisters have no say in the reproductive decisions of the other. And my mother and father have no say in their reproductive decisions either. And I as their brother have no say in their reproductive decisions. So if one of my sisters clones herself, does that make my other sister the parent of the clone? Of course not.
So the fact that a person has the same DNA as you means precisely nothing, legally. They are not you, they are not your slave, they are not your property. They are also not neccesarily your child, or your parent’s child, or your brother or your sister. Their relationship to you is determined not by their DNA but by their social position. If you raise them as your child, then they are your child. If your parents raise them as their child, then they are your sibling. If strangers raise the baby, then they are legally unrelated to you. And your relationship to that person can change, if courts find that the parents of that child are unfit.
Cloning presents no new ethical problems, all we have to do is follow clear workable precedents. Corporations cannot own people, slavery is illegal, identical twins are ethically unremarkable, adoption is common, and unfit parents can have their parental rights terminated.
However, that doesn’t mean that cloning is a smart decision. Since it is not clear that cloning is safe, an ethical doctor would not perform the procedure. It is still experimental. And it is extremely wasteful of gametes. Currently, the procedure to harvest human eggs is difficult, and somewhat dangerous. Since every successful cloning requires perhaps 100 human eggs to get one viable embryo, the supply of human eggs is a severe limiting factor. If you were pretty sure that you would need only one or two eggs to get a clone, then it would be a problem. But it generally takes hundreds, and each egg harvest only supplies a few eggs. So to create one clone would require perhaps dozens of egg harvests.
And of course many–if not most–and possibly ALL–mammal clones are showing health problems of various sorts. If cloning were just as likely to create a healthy baby as normal in vitro fertilization then there would be no problem. But that is not the case. If the first few cloned babies are born with severe health problems then this is going to spark a tremendous anti-cloning backlash. Cloning currently is not safe. It is not wise. It is not ethical. CURRENTLY. But when it becomes as safe as IVF then cloning presents no new ethical problems.
