Transcript What`s So Bad About Human Cloning?

So What’s So Bad About Human
Cloning?
Andrew Latus
Jan. 22, 2003
An Important Distinction
 Therapeutic Cloning vs. Reproductive
Cloning
– Therapeutic = producing a clone as a source of
material for experiment and/or treatment
 Some moral issues differ depending on the
type of cloning being discussed
 Main focus will be on reproductive cloning
Six Issues
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1. 'It's unnatural.'
2. The moral status of clones
3. The motivation of the person being cloned
4. Risks to the clone
5. Who will the parent be?
6. Does cloning someone inherently
disrespect the clone?
– 1, 2, 3 & 6 are also relevant to therapeutic cloning
1. Unnaturalness
 Or … ‘cloning is playing god.’
 Or … ‘cloning is inconsistent with human dignity”
– “… some practices … are simply unacceptable, because
they're not consistent with human dignity, such as cloning a
person and creating animal-human hybrids. Those are
unacceptable, because they're just not consistent with
human dignity." (Alan Rock, May 3, 2001)
 In other words, there’s just something wrong with
cloning, no matter how it’s carried out.
2. The Moral Status of Clones
 Would clones be people like you and me?
 Would they have souls?
 Some claim that human cloning will involve
the creation of a 'new slave class'.
 For therapeutic cloning: at what point does
the clone become morally important?
3. The Motivation of the Person
Being Cloned
 Some claim that to want to clone yourself is to
have a morally bad motivation.
 Perhaps it's unacceptably vain.
 Perhaps it involves seeing a clone as a
means to an end, not as an entity that is
valuable in and of itself
4. Risks to the Clone
 A clone might suffer physical, psychological, or
social harm.
 Physical: Many reports of cloned animals being less
healthy than the original
 Psychological: Growing up knowing yourself to be
a genetic copy of someone may have a psychological
cost
 Social: A stigma might attach to being known to be a
clone
5. Who will the parent be?
 Both a legal and a moral question
 Would the clone be a child or a sibling
of the person cloned (or neither)?
 The category of parent has both
biological and social elements
6. Does cloning someone inherently
disrespect the clone?
 Also relevant to the motivation of the person being
cloned
 A central ethical idea: a person should be treated not
as a means to an end, but as an end in him/herself
 Will clones always (or almost always) be created as a
means to some end?
– E.g., reproducing a loved one, a great leader, an athlete,
producing a source for a transplant