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Perfectionism
SC ( 10/11/2003, 09:59:55 )First of all, although much of what follows is for the general readership, I congratulate you on the good work you are doing here. I have found several of your posts quite informative, although I try to keep up with the latest cloning news much more than most people do. I am also glad to see that you are fighting the battle for public acceptance of cloning in the trenches, so to speak, because too many people who are against cloning will not be reached by inviting them to read an archive of essays.For the most part, I have been slow to post here because I agree with many of your postings and do not have much to add to what you have said. However, while writing my own verbal arguments in response to people who oppose cloning, I have thought of a couple of points which I think are worth mentioning."Racism" is used not only to refer to prejudice based on skin color, but also in a blanket sense, to refer to prejudice in general. In the case of prejudice against cloning, however, I think it is important to avoid such potential confusion. To even suggest that clones can be the targets of racism, according to the first definition, is to some extent racist. One way racism works is to suggest that there is no other way to look at people than as members of different races. The prejudice against people who might be conceived by cloning does not work the same way that racism does, because it is more abstract. The best existing "ism" word that I can think of to describe the prejudice against cloning is perfectionism. Freedom from death by aging is just one of the elements of heaven, but when people see that one of the elements might be attainable, they want the whole package. They don't realize that going to heaven isn't the same as recreating it step by step on earth. People therefore have a double standard when they look at cloning versus any other medical advancement; they want cloning to be an all-or-nothing proposition. When an announcement is made about a promising treatment for cancer, people might say that it works only on a few people or a small percentage of the time, but it's still an improvement. When a similar announcement is made about cloning or stem cell research, people come up with lists of hysterical "reasons" against it and say that it should be banned. Why don't they want to ban cancer research too? I think this is because cloning has so much promise that people are afraid to get their hopes up. Either they don't want to hear about it, or they want it to work perfectly, the first time, right now. When research promises to keep people from dying for a little while longer, people don't have to redo the emotional work they've done in coming to terms with death, but when it promises to keep them from dying at all, the uncertainty is perhaps too great for many people to bear. When people complain that there have been birth defects in some cloned animals, for instance, they are not complaining that scientists have "gone too far." They are complaining that scientists haven't gone far enough to make cloning work perfectly!When people say that people conceived through cloning should either live free from prejudice or they should not live at all, they are once again expecting cloning to make people's lives perfect. The reality is that there are so many ways for people to be discriminated against that their method of conception would be the last thing they would have to worry about. Clones wouldn't have nearly as much to deal with as people who are black, or gay, or any number of other things. This is because a person's method of conception isn't visible. Cloning would work much like the other ways of building a family that we already have, and you can't tell, just by looking at someone, whether they were adopted or conceived in a test tube. Even when these things become known, it's generally between people who already know each other. Adopted children and test tube babies people can get to know and like someone before they have to reveal their family history, so the opportunity for prejudice has already been bypassed. In addition, I think that even where strangers are concerned, people don't generally care how someone was conceived. It's like someone was a persecuted minority at the moment of conception but then became like everyone else; what's done is done, and once it's done, people don't think about it. There isn't a lot of hatred directed toward actual people who were conceived as test tube babies, for instance, even though there was a big outcry when it first became possible to conceive children in a test tube. Generally, when people are prejudiced towards someone or something, they don't realize it. For instance, when people say that clones should never be born because they might suffer discrimination, that is an extremely vicious form of prejudice, because none of us would ever be born if we had to meet the same standards. However, the fact that people worry so much about prejudice against clones after they are born is a good indication that prejudice after birth won't be much of a problem. In other words, people are prejudiced against the cloning process, but they won't be prejudiced against the people created by that process. Whether people's lives get longer and healthier through cloning or nanotechnology or some other method we haven't even thought of yet, we're going to have to face the same fears that other people have faced throughout history. There are plenty of horrible things happening in the world, and one discovery isn't going to make them all go away. However, there have been many medical discoveries and technological advancements that we enjoy and take for granted today, even though they were opposed in the past (for instance, flying was one of mankind's oldest dreams, and when the Wright brothers made the first flight, people were upset that they didn't fly far enough). One way or another, people have always been able to imagine a world better than their own, and they've always been a bit disappointed by new discoveries that brought them only partway toward the world they wanted. That hasn't stopped the discoveries from being made; in fact, it usually encourages new ones.
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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