News
The first
successful cloning of primates makes the headlines in the scientific press
today.
(See also
yesterday’s contribution by
The
researchers were successful in cloning a primate embryo by inserting a skin
cell of a grown-up rhesus macaque into an egg of the same species which had the
DNA removed. The same basic procedure gave birth to Dolly the sheep in 1997.
The cloned rhesus macaque embryos are then used to make embryonic stem-cell
lines.
http://www.nature.com/news/2007/071114/full/news.2007.245.html
General Ethical Concerns
As is the
case in most research which can be classified as `basic’, cloning might yield
benefits we would not wish to jeopardise. The rhesus macaque clones lead to
heated speculations about the potential of somatic cell nuclear transfer in the
curing or alleviating of degenerative diseases. But such basic research most often also
threatens us with hazards, related to, for example, the (hard-to-control) misuses
and unwanted and unavoidable side effects of its technological implementation.
In both advertising
its benefits as well as worrying about its hazards, the so-called `therapeutic
(or embryo) cloning’ like the one reported yesterday has to be distinguished
from `reproductive cloning’ on the one hand and from `DNA cloning’ (or
`recombinant DNA technology’) on the other hand. The latter is less
controversial and in use since the 1970s. All three types of cloning raise
different ethical questions, but also are distinct empirically – though, of
course, progress in one field, might also advance the other. This might be the
case for the recent breakthrough in the cloning of primate embryos: For example
the reported progress made recently with primate embryos might yield a break
through in reproductive cloning. Presently these are just dreams of the
future, even for the reproductive cloning of monkeys, as S.M. Mitlipov points
out, who was the leader of the recent research on rhesus macaque.
Reproductive Cloning
Nonetheless,
the discussions on cloning are often blurred. News like the above raises in some
the hope, and in some the fear of reproductive cloning of humans. These hopes
and fears, though they might be experientially unjustified at present, do influence
our attitudes towards cloning as a whole. They thus in turn influence the
research funding from public sources.
That is why
it is important to raise at this early stage the question if and why a state in
which reproductive cloning is allowed is really the bugaboo it is commonly
taken as. Thereby we focus on an ideal-type of cloning in which the clones do
not show deficiencies in comparison to natural offspring, for example in terms
of life expectancy.
The raised question
then takes us to the central question of the function and purpose of a state. This
is not the place to discuss this question in depth. Just to note that it is not
the cone-end of modern, liberal or even very liberal thinking that choosing
ones offspring is seen as a very private affair, with which the state has to
infer as little as possible. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule, but
these must be well grounded. The primary function of the state is to serve for the people who live in it. It is not
up to the people to provide the state with a certain kind of order (unless it
is in their interest) and the even lesser it is up to the people to secure that
the state can survive in its status-quo by providing the right type of
citizens. Whenever individuals, groups of individuals, nations etc, subrogate
some of their rights to the corresponding higher institution,
it is up to the higher level to vindicate this step.
In
political theory this principle is sometimes referred to as subsidiarity when
it comes to the subrogation of rights from one (local) institution to another
(usually national, super-national one). However the roots of this principle are
much older and can be traced back to what Aristotle characterized as `justitia
commutativa’ (in English roughly: exchange of justice).
That is to
say: When the state wants to forbid some kind of offspring, as this is what
clones might represent, it must provide us with good reasons why it interferes
in such genuine private decisions. And even if we do not want to count a clone
as an offspring, some people might just believe that cloning is the ultimate
way for them, and possibly for others, to achieve happiness. They might be utterly
wrong about that. But in modern heterogeneous societies, the state as a
national or super-national institution does not seem to be the right place to
address what happiness means for the individual.
imagine scenarios where the above argument breaks down. For example, the
currently known animal clones live significantly shorter than natural offspring.
Hence the principle not to deliberately harm humans (or animals) forbids in
this case the cloning. The above argument also breaks down for a society which
becomes highly unstable as the genetic human pool is drastically reduced due to
excessive cloning. This might yield similar threats to the future existence of
mankind as the green revolution, which by reducing the gene pool for many seeds
makes them vulnerable to rare and harmful events. However the latter is a
scenario which, firstly, seems very unlikely. Although some people might find
or think to find their ultimate happiness in cloning themselves or in cloning of
dying loved ones – a child killed in accident, to give a dramatic example – this
will not be the majority. Many people are clearly aware of the fact that the
personality of their dying child is more than the sum of its genes and so
neither witchcraft nor wizardry and not even molecular biology can compensate
them for their loss. Secondly, people have offspring for the sake of having
children and all that which goes with it, and quite often of the wish to have
children involves having them together with a partner. The availability of
reproductive cloning devices will not alter these wishes. The slope we enter
with a society which leaves the decision to make or make not use reproductive
cloning facilities is not necessarily slippery: Suitable institutions can
prevent the slope from becoming slippery. For example, the misuse of cloning,
just as the misuse of other technologies, has to be regulated.
of a society which ignores the rights of the individual in such a personal
matter outweigh the harm of a liberal attitude towards reproductive cloning.
The latter harm includes the hurt moral feelings of people opposed to cloning
as well as the injustice which might arise due to the fact that cloning is most
likely only available for some social groups. This selectivity, though very
serious, is not specific to cloning. The same holds for the dangers which go
along with the abuse of cloning facilities. However these provide no arguments
against a liberal attitude to reproductive cloning per se.
The fact
that the embryo cloning which was reported in Nature yesterday might yield to
reproductive cloning even of humans in some however distant future is one
reason for the wide resonance this research gets outside the scientific
community. However, this possible future side-strain of the research does not
give arguments pro or against the current research on embryo or therapeutic
cloning.
References
Original
publication
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/pdf/nature06357.pdf
Reactions
in the public press
http://news.independent.co.uk/sci_tech/article3152325.ece
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7094215.stm#graphic
http://news.independent.co.uk/sci_tech/article3155079.ece
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article2870675.ece
further links)
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/cloning.shtml
http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/landing.asp?id=1202