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Illegal Beings: Human Clones
Re: HELP PLEASE!
SC ( 10/20/2004, 18:33:29 )Cloning isn't genetic engineering. Cloning involves making more cells that as much like the original ones as possible, so that they won’t be rejected if they’re used for disease treatment. Genetic engineering, as I understand it, involves changing someone’s genetic code. Cloning is of greatest potential use for treating degenerative conditions and diseases. It might be used to regrow lost or weakened organs or body parts (work has already been done with teeth, joints, and hearts), and to treat Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, arthritis, diabetes, muscular dystrophy, and cancer (in the case of cancer, it wouldn't be about replacing lost cells, but using stem cells to attack the cancer cells or using what we learn from stem cells to keep cancer cells from growing out of control). It might also be used to counteract aging and, as a means of conception, to treat infertility, either by making cells that could be developed into eggs and sperm for in vitro fertilization (combining cells from different parents), or by making a baby that is the genetic twin of one existing person.Our concepts of morality are most commonly based on what promotes the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people (utilitarianism), and/or some version of Kant's categorical imperative (a more sophisticated version of the golden rule).Happiness can be argued to consist of two basic elements: relative presence of pleasure and absence of pain, and the capacity to choose. One person may choose a life which another would consider miserable, and still consider himself happy because he chose his "misery."The position you have taken is a utilitarian one: People suffering from what you consider "diseases" outnumber those who suffer from infertility, and "reproductive" cloning therefore has fewer supporters, so you choose what you consider the most politically expedient position, which will make the most people happy with the least effort.However, this position is vulnerable to attack using Kantian principles, and people who oppose cloning often tend to be fond of Kantian principles. In Kant's "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" system, a moral law can't be valid unless it is universal; the rules must apply to everyone. The usual "cloning to cure diseases is right, but cloning to cure infertility is wrong" stance is vulnerable to attack on the grounds that it is the same as saying "cloning is right for me but wrong for you.""Therapeutic" and "reproductive" cloning both depend on the same process. Therefore, if you say that you want to ban "reproductive" cloning, your opponents can attack your position on the grounds that one type of cloning will lead to the other. In terms of the happiness of the people you aim to benefit, you will also end up arguing in favor of restricting their liberty, by forbidding them to do something that they aren't interested in doing anyway, and thereby restricting their capacity to make their own choices and mature as moral decision-makers.The anti-utilitarian argument often made by anti-cloners is that it's wrong to sacrifice one life to save another. In the case of blastocysts, I think the argument is false: the person the cells come from and the cloned cells are in partnership with each other; the cells must be rejuvenated and survive for the body to do the same, and the cells need a body to grow in if they are to develop very far. If it’s wrong to create one life to save another, as anti-cloners have also argued, then all life is wrong, because we all depend on other people and other living things for our survival (not that life is ever really created today; “passed on” might be a better term).One definition of life is the capacity for living things to replicate (in other words, clone) themselves. Arguments against cloning, when reduced to their essentials, are arguments against living. Since we have to be alive to choose what is morally right, attempts to ban cloning involve infringing upon basic rights which documents like the United States Constitution treat as inviolable: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.I’ve argued elsewhere on these message boards that having a debate on whether or not some other innocent person should be allowed to live is never fair; it’s a violation of that person’s rights, and none of the debaters’ business.
This Message is being posted for educational purposes, as well as for comment and criticism, by the visitors to the HumanCloning.org Foundation website (www.HumanCloning.org ).
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