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Illegal Beings: Human Clones
Re: Cloning Debate Questions
libfemme ( 11/07/2003, 01:41:12 )First analyze your opponents objection to see if it rests on the uniqueness of cloning. Most arguments against cloning are really arguments against totalitarian government or child abuse or other social problems that we already have without cloning. To be an objection to cloning your opponent must give you an argument that applies only cloning. For instance an argument that says cloning is wrong because if kills embryos is not an objection to cloning but to any process that end in the death of undifferentiated cells. Does your opponent also oppose abortion in the first trimester and certain forms of birth control such as the coil and the morning after pill? If he does not then he is applying a double standard and being intellectually dishonest. He is dishonest because he accepts the death of embryo’s in one situation but not in another. The embryo doesn’t chance in cloning or in using birth control. What changes is the means of the embryo’s death the actions of parent. Therefore an objection to cloning because it kills embryo’s is in fact an argument over whether a man or woman controls his or her own reproductive life or society does. Likewise an argument that cloning is unacceptable because it may cause birth defects begs the questions that birth defects occur naturally now, for reason having nothing to do with cloning. Suppose a child was not made by cloning but by natural conception and had the same birth defects. Would your opponent then be in favor of criminalizing the parents? Suppose the mother was diabetic was warned that a pregnancy could lead to overlarge organ syndrome. Should she be subject to a 10 year prison sentence for attempting to get pregnant even if the child is healthy? If not, then why should a mother who attempts to clone a baby be subject to a 10 year prison sentence regardless of the outcome for the baby? The cloning ban passed by the US House of Representatives (but not yet passed by the Senate) says anyone who has a cloned embryo implanted in their womb, in the US or outside the US, is subject to a 10 year prison sentence. If someone is truly appalled at the idea of a mother risking having an baby with developmental defects then both mother’s should equally appall him. Do they? Another way to look at this issue to ask should an Insurance Company be able refuse coverage for a natural pregnancy to a couple who have had genetic counseling? If a couple finds there is cystic fibrous or leukemia in their family history and the risks are 25% that they are a carrier, should insurance companies be able to drop their coverage if they try to conceive naturally? If your opponent says they would find the insurance companies action unconscionable, ask why? If any risk is unacceptable why isn’t this risk also unacceptable and punishable by prison? Perhaps this particular couple will not have a defective baby, but we know that is all such couples have a baby, 25% of them will have a baby with defects, therefore all couple with this genetic history should be banned from having children, right? If having no children at all is preferable to having even the chance of a birth defect occurring, which is what is said about cloning, then it should be preferable that fertile couples also abstain from having children naturally rather than risk the chance of even one child being born who could have a birth defect. If that idea seems preposterous. No one wants any child to have birth defects, but it is impossible to know in advance all possible outcomes of a pregnancy, that every thing contains a degree of risk, we risk accidents driving down the highway, we risk elevators falling etc. It is the degree of risk that we are willing to accept that determines whether something is safe enough for us to engage in it. Different people accept different risk levels. Some people won’t fly. Others do. Is only one of them making the right decision? So if the issue becomes not 100% certainty but the level of the risk, then all we need to know is what percentage of risk we are implicitly accepting now. Since laws should apply equally to people then the acceptable risk percentage should be the same for cloned embryos as it is for natural embryos. By the way, does your opponent even know what the percentage of birth defects is naturally? Then how can he judge whether the risks of cloning are high or low if he has no idea what “normal” is, nothing to compare it to? If your opponent objects to cloning because such children will be abused, then he objects to is abuse not cloning. There are laws already against child abuse. No suggest that the means of stopping child abuse is to stop all parents from having any more natural children. So why suggest that the way to prevent any possibility of a cloned child being abused is to have their parents forbidden to give them life in the first place?What I have given you is not specific answer to specific objections but a way to figure out your own replies to objections to cloning. There are many excellent lists refuting the objections of cloning. Here is one:
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 ).
Disclaimer: Information provided on this web site is for educatonal purposes only. It is not a substitute for, nor can it replace advice from your own physician.
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