The Wide Angle: The Case for Cloning Humans

The development of cloning technology constitutes an unprecedented advance in medical research. Cloning plays a key role in stem cell research, which has the potential to lead to effective treatments for serious medical illnesses. Reproductive cloning can be an option for couples who are infertile, or who both carry a recessive gene that could lead to a genetic disorder. Given the apparent benefits of this technology, why are we so resistant to the thought of cloning human beings?

One of the most common objections to cloning has to do with an intuitive aversion to "manufacturing" people. To clone a human being is to "play God." According to the 2002 The President's Council on Bioethics report on cloning, cloning would entail "the transformation of human procreation into human manufacture, of begetting into making... [Clones would] be brought into being in accordance with some pre-selected genetic pattern or design, and therefore in some sense 'made to order' by their producers or progenitors."

But what does it mean to "manufacture" rather than "beget" a child? Perhaps we manufacture a child when we intentionally select for certain traits. But it seems we already "manufacture" children in that sense. Consider what happens when we choose a mate. One reason we find some people more attractive than others has to do with our preference for certain genetic profiles -- we want to pass on the best genes we can to our future children. And there is nothing wrong with that. Likewise, women who wish to have a child using sperm from a sperm bank donor quite explicitly choose whose sperm they prefer based on what traits they would like to see in their children.

In any case, parents already choose to give their children certain traits by choosing to raise them in certain ways. Parents can influence the physiological development of their children by how they choose to feed them, and influence their mental development by how they choose to educate them. Parents can choose to have their child trained in a musical instrument, or to have their child learn to play a given sport. But why think this kind of trait selection is permissible, while genetic selection is not? There is no sharp line between genetics and environment, and who we are is a result of a complex interplay between the two. A child's environment and experiences has a profound impact on the development of her personality, her intelligence, and her passions -- just as much as her genetic profile.

So parents are already manipulating their children to elicit traits they find desirable. And all these experiences shape a child's personality and passions. But, as any parents will tell you, no child turns out the way they expected. No amount of intervention will prevent a child from developing her own interests and following her own dreams. It does not matter whether that child has been "shaped" -- by environment or genetics -- to become an engineer, an athlete, or an artist. To think that the advent of cloning technology will allow us to create human beings who will behave exactly as we wish is to vastly underestimate the power of the human spirit.

The 2002 President's Council on Bioethics report said that cloning is an affront to human dignity. But it is not. Rather, it is blocking the development of a technology that has the potential to alleviate a great amount of human suffering that constitutes an insult to human dignity.