Dimensions: 7.6'' x 5.37'' 121 pages AEI Press  (Washington) Publication Date: June 1998 Hardcover ISBN: 0844740500 Price: $ 16.95 Add to Cart   Examination Copies

June 1998
The Ethics of Human Cloning
By Leon R. Kass and James Q. Wilson

If human cloning becomes a practical reality, is it a reality we humans should countenance? Should human cloning be left to individual choice and discovery, regulated (for example, limited to married couples or infertile married couples), or banned outright? Leon R. Kass and James Q. Wilson arrive at different answers to these questions, on the basis of different assessments of the ethical implications of cloning for human sexuality and the traditional family. This volume includes two essays by each author--a main essay and a second one responding to the other.

Leon R. Kass
The Wisdom of Repugnance

Human cloning, though it is in some respects continuous with previous reproductive technologies, also represents something radically new, in itself and in its easily foreseeable consequences. The stakes are very high indeed. I exaggerate, but in the direction of the truth, when I insist that we are faced with having to decide nothing less than whether human procreation is going to remain human, whether children are going to be made rather than begotten, whether it is a good thing, humanly speaking, to say yes in principle to the road that leads (at best) to the dehumanized rationality of Brave New World. This is not business as usual, to be fretted about for a while but finally to be given our seal of approval. We must rise to the occasion and make our judgments as if the future of our humanity hangs in the balance.

We are repelled by the prospect of cloning human beings not because of the strangeness or novelty of the undertaking, but because we intuit and feel, immediately and without argument, the violation of things that we rightfully hold dear. Repugnance, here as elsewhere, revolts against the excesses of human willfulness, warning us not to transgress what is unspeakably profound. Indeed, in this age in which everything is held to be permissible so long as it is freely done, in which our given human nature no longer commands respect, in which our bodies are regarded as mere instruments of our autonomous rational wills, repugnance may be the only voice left that speaks up to defend the central core of our humanity. Shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to shudder.

Sexual reproduction--by which I mean the generation of new life from (exactly) two complementary elements, one female, one male, (usually) through coitus--is established (if that is the right term) not by human decision, culture, or tradition, but by nature; it is the natural way of all mammalian reproduction. By nature, each child has two complementary biological progenitors. Each child thus stems from and unites exactly two lineages. In natural generation, moreover, the precise genetic constitution of the resulting offspring is determined by a combination of nature and chance, not by human design: each human child shares the common natural human species genotype, each child is genetically (equally) kin to both parents, yet each child is also genetically unique.

There is wisdom in the mystery of nature that has joined the pleasure of sex, the inarticulate longing for union, the communication of the loving embrace, and the deep-seated and only partly articulate desire for children in the very activity by which we continue the chain of human existence and participate in the renewal of human possibility. Whether or not we know it, the severing of procreation from sex, love, and intimacy is inherently dehumanizing, no matter how good the product.

In the case of cloning, however, there is but one "parent." The usually sad situation of the "single-parent child" is here deliberately planned, and with a vengeance. In the case of self-cloning, the "offspring" is, in addition, one’s twin; and so the dreaded result of incest--to be parent to one’s sibling--is here brought about deliberately, albeit without any act of coitus. Moreover, all other relationships will be confounded. What will father, grandfather, aunt, cousin, and sister mean? Who will bear what ties and what burdens? What sort of social identity will someone have with one whole side--"father’s" or "mother’s"--necessarily excluded? It is no answer to say that our society, with its high incidence of divorce, remarriage, adoption, extramarital childbearing, and the rest, already confounds lineage and confuses kinship and responsibility for children (and everyone else), unless one also wants to argue that this is, for children, a preferable state of affairs.

James Q. Wilson
The Paradox of Cloning

There are both philosophical and utilitarian objections to cloning. Two philosophical objections exist. The first is that cloning violates God’s will by creating an infant in a way that does not depend on human sexual congress or make possible the divine inculcation of a soul. That is true, but so does in vitro fertilization. When first proposed, in vitro fertilization was ethically suspect. Today, it is generally accepted--and for good reason. Science supplies what one or both human bodies lack, namely, a reasonable chance to produce an infant. Surely God can endow that infant with a soul.

The other philosophical objection is that cloning is contrary to nature. That is often asserted by critics of cloning who do not believe in an active God. I sympathize with that reaction, but few critics have yet made clear to me what compelling aspect of nature cloning violates. To the extent that such an objection has meaning, I think it must arise from the danger that the cloned child will be put to various harmful uses. If so, the objection cannot easily be distinguished from the more practical problems.

One set of those problems requires us to imagine scientists’ cloning children to harvest organs and body parts or to produce for later use many Adolf Hitlers or Saddam Husseins. I have no doubt that there will arise mad scientists willing to do those things.

But under what circumstances will such abuses occur? Largely, I think, when the cloned child has no parents. Parents, whether they acquire a child by normal birth, artificial insemination, or adoption, will, in the overwhelming majority of cases, become deeply attached to the infant and care for it without regard to its origin. The parental tie is not infallible--infanticide occurs, and some neonates are abandoned in trash bins--but it is powerful and largely independent of the origin of the child. If cloning is to occur, the central problem is to ensure that it be done only for two-parent families who want a child for their own benefit. Hardly any parents, I think, would allow their child to be used as an organ bank for defective adults or as the next-generation proxy for a malevolent dictator. If the cloned child is born in the same way as a child resulting from marital congress, can it matter to the parents how it was conceived? And if it does not matter to the parents, should it matter to us?

My view--that cloning presents no special ethical risks if society does all in its power to establish that the child is born to a married woman and is the joint responsibility of the married couple--will not satisfy those whose objections to cloning are chiefly religious. If man is made in the image of God, can man make himself (by cloning) and still be in God’s image? I would suggest that producing a fertilized egg by sexual contact does not uniquely determine that image and therefore that nonsexual, in vitro fertilization is acceptable. And if that is so, then nonsexually transplanting cell nuclei into enucleated eggs might also be acceptable.

Leon R. Kass
Family Needs Its Natural Roots

Like Professor Wilson, I am not especially worried about possible political abuses of cloning, for example, the mass production of identical clones or the replication of dictators, or about threats to human evolution. I also agree that, at least in the short run, cloning is unlikely to be widely used as a means of satisfying the reproductive desires of married couples. Professor Wilson and I share a deep commitment to marriage and the normal two-parent family, primarily because we care about the well-being of children. And I am willing to concede that a cloned child, if born of woman and if cared for lovingly and responsibly within a marriage like any other child (a big if), could turn out to be no worse or less happy a person than he or I—that would be an empirical question, not resolvable as a matter of principle. But I cannot share Professor Wilson’s optimism that the practice can be confined to such seemingly innocent intramarital cases.

By removing human conception from the human body and by introducing new partners in reproduction (scientists and physicians), in vitro fertilization did more than "supply what one or both bodies lack, namely, a reasonable chance to produce an infant." By putting the origin of human life literally in human hands, in vitro fertilization began a process that would lead, in practice, to the increasing technical mastery of human generation and, in thought, to the continuing erosion of respect for the mystery of sexuality and human renewal. The very existence of in vitro fertilization, notwithstanding its real benefits, also becomes a justification for the next steps in turning procreation into manufacture (Professor Wilson is already singing the song of that slippery slope), not least because it obscures the deeper meaning of the naturally significant relations among embodiment, sexual differentiation, and procreation. The arrival of cloning, far from gaining legitimacy from the precedent of in vitro fertilization, should rather awaken those who previously saw no difficulty with starting human life in petri dishes.

By playing down the psychological issue of identity and individuality, Professor Wilson is able to treat as innocent the prospect of intrafamilial cloning--cloning of husband or wife. But even the defenders of cloning readily acknowledge the unique dangers of mixing the twin relation with the parent-child relation. (For that situation, the relation of contemporaneous identical twins is no precedent; yet even this less problematic case teaches us how difficult it is to wrest independence from the being with whom one has the most powerful affinity.) Virtually no parent is going to be able to treat a clone of him- or herself as one does a child generated by the lottery of sex. The new life will constantly be scrutinized in relation to that of the older copy.

Professor Wilson is also naïve in believing that cloning can be confined to married couples seeking merely a remedy for childlessness. In vitro fertilization has not been so restricted; single women now use artificial insemination with donor sperm, both in vivo and in vitro. Commercial sperm banks are apparently thriving, including some that specialize in eugenic germinal choice (sperm from geniuses). Couples interested in cloning, especially those who have figured out the dangers of self-cloning, will certainly want to make use of "high-class" donor nuclei. (But notice that for people willing to go outside the marriage for sources of gametes, in vitro fertilization with donor sperm and embryo donation are already alternatives to cloning, so there is almost no one for whom cloning is the only alternative to either childlessness or adoption.) Cloning provides the powerful opening salvo in the campaign to exercise control over the quality of offspring.

Given our current beliefs about reproductive freedom, the fracture of the once-respected and solid bonds among sex, love, procreation, and stable marriage, and the relentless march of technology, it will prove impossible to preserve Professor Wilson’s faint hopes for family and parenthood—in the absence of some miraculous recovery of good sense about sexuality and the meaning of procreation and an attitude that once again sees children as a gift to be treasured rather than as a product for our manipulation.

James Q. Wilson
Sex and Family

Dr. Kass’s view may overlap mine, but it is somewhat different in emphasis. He worries that creating babies without marital sex is the fundamental error. He is distressed by the prospect of children being "made rather than begotten" because that will weaken the "soul-elevating power of sexuality" that has been established "by nature." "By nature, each child has two complementary biological progenitors. ... [And so] the precise genetic constitution of the resulting offspring is determined by a combination of nature and chance, not by human design." We are profoundly threatened, he suggests, by "asexual reproduction" that produces "‘single-parent’ offspring." Such offspring will experience confusion over their identity, suffer from being produced as "artifacts," and become the victims of "despotism." Asexual reproduction, in his view, is an effort to maintain "self-preservation"; sexual reproduction, by contrast, implies that we are perishable: "when we are sexually active we are voting with our genitalia for our own demise."

If Dr. Kass thinks that sexuality is more important than families, then he would object to any form of assisted reproduction that does not involve parental coition. Many such forms now exist. Children are adopted by parents who did not give them birth. Artificial insemination produces children without sexual congress. Some forms of such insemination rely on sperm produced by a man other than the woman’s husband, while other forms involve the artificial insemination of a surrogate mother who will relinquish the baby to a married couple. By in vitro fertilization, eggs and sperm can be joined in a petri dish and then transferred into the woman’s uterus.

There have been several efforts to study how well the children fare. I am aware of none that shows in vitro fertilization to have had a harmful effect on the children’s mental or psychological status or their relationships with parents. One study in the Netherlands found children conceived by in vitro fertilization in two-parent families to be the object of more maternal involvement and pleasure than were children of similar parents whose offspring had been conceived without in vitro fertilization.

If the child is born of a woman who is part of a two-parent family and both parents work hard to raise it properly, and if the child’s life is not harmed by the fact that it was adopted, conceived artificially or in a petri dish, or even conceived with an egg or sperm from another person, we poor mortals have done all that man and God might expect of us.

My views on assisted reproduction do not coincide with Dr. Kass’s because I do not attach the same overriding significance to ordinary coitus as the source of children. I know of very little evidence that assisted reproduction, other than reluctant surrogacy, harms either the children or their parents.

I certainly favor limiting cloning to intact, heterosexual families and placing sharp restrictions on the source of the eggs. We do not want families planning to have a movie star, basketball player, or high-energy physicist as an offspring. But I confess that I am not clear as to how those limits might be drawn, and if no one can solve that puzzle, I would join Dr. Kass in banning cloning. Perhaps the best solution is a kind of screened lottery akin to what doctors performing in vitro fertilization now do with donated sperm. One can match his race or ethnicity and even select a sex, but beyond that he takes his chances.

I am persuaded that if only heterosexual families can clone, and if we sharply limit the sources of the embryo they can implant in the woman, cloning will be quite rare. Sex is more fun than cloning, and artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization preserve the element of genetic chance that most people, I think, favor. Dr. Kass is right to stress the mystery and uncertainty of sexual union. That is why hardly any woman with a fertile husband who could obtain a sperm from a donor bank will do so. Procreation is a delight.

Leon R. Kass is the Addie Clark Harding Professor in the Committee on Social Thought and the College of the University of Chicago and the Hertog Fellow at AEI. James Q. Wilson is the James A. Collins Professor of Management and Public Policy Emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles, and chairman of AEI’s Council of Academic Advisers.