WRITING NATURE: 
DISCOURSES OF ECOLOGY

[ DRAFT ]

Like most, you have heard about the latest craze in genetics; you have seen the televised reports of the world's most mammalian clone: the sheep, Dolly; you have read that the future of mankind now rests in the hands of scientists in genetic laboratories across the world. Recently, the cloning controversy has begun again with a renewed fervor: there is now a real possibility to see a human clone within the next ten years! Human cloning, in simplified form, is the fusing of a cell and an egg that lacks a nucleus (thus, no DNA) to form an embryo. The embryo only contains DNA from one source and develops into an exact physical replica of the original animal that donated the DNA-carrying cell.

During the past decade, the U.S. government and private organizations allocated research and funding in the hope that one day, we would have a genetic map of ourselves; that goal was achieved years ahead of schedule in the summer of 2000. However, whereas many supported the mapping of human DNA, not all applications arising from its use have been met with universal enthusiasm; rather, it has been the center of a controversy that has enormous ramifications: what is our future? Will we live in a world of duplicates or a society of unique individuals? Now, the question that we must face is should human cloning be allowed? The answer has brought about a storm of debates that test our ethics and what we choose to become in the future.

There are two different "purposes" of cloning under debate. On one hand, cloning could be used for reproductive purposes. In this case, geneticists would use a person's existing DNA to create a genetic duplicate. Whereas sexual reproduction involves genes from both an egg and sperm, a cloned individual would receive all of its genes from a single person.

The graphic above illustrates a cloning method known as somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). In this process, the nucleus from a body cell is inserted into an egg without a nucleus. If the embryo is placed into a women's uterus and carried to birth, the individual created would have only one set of genetic material, namely, from the donor's body cell. The result is a genetic duplicate.

On the other hand, human cloning raises the important issue of cloning for research purposes. Research cloning, also known as therapeutic cloning, uses the same SCNT process as reproductive cloning, but instead of implanting the embryo in a womb, the embryo would instead be used for research purposes.

As illustrated by the graphics, the clonal embryo could then be harvested as stem cells and then separated into various tissues for further research. In essence, research cloning could provide an endless supply of stem cells that could be used as replacement tissues for patients. Furthermore, whereas tissue transplants run the risk of being rejected by a recipient, tissue transferred via research cloning would presumably be accepted by the patient's immune system since the cells would essentially be from the same individual.

However, while advocates claim that the cloning would become one of our greatest tools&emdash;medical research, organ transplants, and even "regenerating" lost loved ones, we still must question whether human cloning is really worth it. For those who wish to be cloned, human cloning raises the ever-pressing issues of affordability for the middle-class citizen and the risk for misuse by the rich and powerful. For the cloned, it creates a sense of lost individuality&emdash;a sense that "I'm not exactly human." For society, human cloning changes our perception of what is the value of a human life: we change from having children to manufacturing children. Human cloning, for sure, carries the possibility of regenerating lost loved ones&emdash;but is it worth it? Would those loved ones even be replicated in a truly meaningful way?

For the typical citizen, human cloning looks unpromising simply because of the cost. When human growth hormone injections can cost an upwards of $30,000 per year, human cloning will inevitably be even more expensive (Gibbs 1). For the rich and powerful, human cloning is another stride towards protecting their wealth for generations to come. Since human cloning would initially be quite expensive, we can be sure that only the affluent will have access when cloning becomes public. The risks from this are enormous: just consider athletes, models, and other upper-class people who may want clones of themselves to perpetuate their legacy, thereby increasing the inequality between the average citizen and the wealthy. Moreover, clones of athletes, models, and other highly talented people may lead to a more narrow-minded society on the ideas of appearance, intelligence, athletic ability, and so forth. Today, we already have a gap between those possessing more desirable qualities&emdash;be it, materially, physically, or mentally&emdash;and the average person; human cloning is another step toward this ugly trend of separation.

Nevertheless, if we do allow cloning to go forward, it obviously must become more mainstream and affordable for the middle-class citizen. Yet, this is not without problems of its own, namely, misuse even by the average person. For example, just consider the parents who would like to live through their children&emdash;human cloning might serve as another avenue to this end. Sadly, if we do allow cloning to be affordable for all, the abuses are still there. On the other hand, if we decide to keep the price high to discourage "mainstream abuse," we may still encounter misuse by the affluent. In an interview on PBS Frontline with Lee Silver, a professor of Genetics at Princeton, Silver comments that "the most disturbing part of this technology is not the cloning, where you just have a child born who happens to be related to one parent instead of two. The most disturbing part of this technology is when parents are going to try to use genes to provide their children with serious advantages" (Frontline 131). Whether for use mainly by the rich, or affordable to everyone, the unresolved risk is that there will be parents who may see human cloning and associated bioengineering techniques as a way to give their children an edge over the rest. In today's highly competitive society, most of us are all striving to be the best: the most intelligent, beautiful, successful, and famous. What parent doesn't want the best for their child? Surely, then, human cloning is another means to this pursuit&emdash;at the genetic level where the impacts can be felt the most.

So far, we have examined cloning from the perspective of those looking at cloning as an alternate means of reproduction, but we have yet to see the implications from the perspective of those most affected: the clones themselves. For the cloned, human cloning raises an issue of identity&emdash;a question of who am I and what am I? Every child has the right to feel unique. Human cloning may diminish this sense of identity because a clone is the same in appearance and in genetic coding as the original. When a cloned child looks into the mirror, he will not see his own face, but someone else's&emdash;perhaps the face of his father or mother or even a deceased relative. He cannot say to himself, "I am one of a kind." He cannot forget that he is the image&emdash;an exact physical image&emdash;of another person. As Leon Kass, a teacher of bioethics at the University of Chicago, testified before the National Bioethics Advisory Committee, "Genetic distinctiveness symbolizes uniqueness of each human life and the independence of its parents that each human child rightfully attains" ("The Necessity of a Permanent Ban" 3). A child today comes into the world with a sense of not only spiritual and physical uniqueness, but also the knowledge that his genetic code is his very own, not some experimental duplicate. He knows that while some of his code comes from his parents, his DNA has never been sequenced before in its entirety.

At this point, proponents of human cloning like to remind us that identical twins fall into this same category. Yet, there is a difference between identical twins and cloned duplicates: twins happen by chance whereas we know before hand whether cloned duplicates will arise. More importantly, studies by Dr. Thomas Bouchard at the University of Minnesota showed that identical twins in different environments produced only slight differences in personality (Wilson 3). Thus, if twins are genetically identical and possess similar personalities, then what are we to say about clones? They may be more similar than we initially suspected, and consequently, they may feel an even greater sense of lost individuality because like identical twins, their personalities will be similar.

In addition, what quality of life will the clone experience? Today, there are already enough problems with parents who try to live vicariously through their children. Parents who have had failed aspirations typically push their children to succeed where they have failed. Yet, most parents still only have hopes for their children; cloning might compel parents to have expectations for their children. The logic behind this is simple: if I clone myself, my clone should possess all the same physical and nearly the same mental qualities as myself, and accordingly, he or she should be able to perform as well as I did. Whereas a child produced by natural means knows that his or her life is shadowed by nothing other than his or her own actions, a clone realizes that his life is simply a shadow of the past that he or she must live up to in the present.

Moreover, in a society that naturally ostracizes those different from us, what is there to guarantee that the cloned will not simply become a part of the outside circle? While today we distinguish human beings on the basis of race, color, religion, and gender, cloning may create a new separation between those conceived by nature, and those born by cloning. Even in vitro fertilization, which involves taking eggs from a woman and fertilizing the in a laboratory with her partner's sperm, still can be considered as being conceived by nature because how the child will turn out is uncertain. However, when we decide to clone a person, we already know how the child will turn out&emdash;a physical replica of the original, and moreover, with a strikingly similar personality as inferred from Dr. Bouchard's research involving twins. We recognize that whether male or female, black or white, we are all human beings. With human cloning, however, we are breaking the boundary of what we define as human: to be given life by love or by experiment. As biotech critic Jeremy Rifkin warns us, "It [cloning] will create a new form of discrimination. How will we look at those who are not enhanced, the child with the low IQ?" (qtd. in Gibbs 8). Thus, once a human clone is born, he may not find companionship or a sense of belonging to our world; he may feel a distance between our world of naturally conceived human beings and his world of laboratory-grown "products." Why create a clone who may feel as if he or she has a diminished sense of identity and uniqueness in the world? By approving of human cloning, we are eroding the very concept of what it means to be a human being: to be able to say that "I am one of a kind."

Finally, human cloning endangers the value we, as a society, place on a human life. When advocates ask you to support cloning, you should ask yourself, "Human cloningŠbut at what social cost?" More than providing a solution to our search, human cloning asks us to relinquish our value of life. We hold a human life with the highest virtue and esteem because we realize our own mortality; we understand that we can never replace a sister, a brother, a parent, or a friend. Human cloning may erode the sense that once someone is gone, he or she is gone forever. Even if a family has five or six children, the parents still hold each child as irreplaceable; human cloning degrades that sense of worth to where the parents might say, "If John dies, we can simply create another in like image." A human life is precious not because we can beget another, but because we can never beget another "in like image."

Human cloning also threatens the very method in which a new life is brought into the world. Whereas in sexual reproduction there is a mother and father each partaking in the creation of the child, human cloning reduces this to asexual reproduction&emdash;a form of reproduction associated with the lowest forms of life, such as bacteria. Sexual reproduction in itself also carries a deeper significance than simply serving as the method of reproduction for our species. Indeed, it has come to symbolize the union of love between two individuals in the creation of a child that will serve as their legacy after the parents pass on. Thus, sexuality also supports the vision of our own mortality: procreation symbolizes the continuing existence of our own species from the union of two individuals. Human cloning, on the other hand, is a radical departure from this lineage. It substitutes two individuals necessary for reproduction with only one, such that the death of the "original" person does not mean a true end to that person's existence: the genetic duplicate still represents that deceased individual genetically and physically. Whereas sexuality calls forth feelings of love and intimacy between individuals, human cloning only requires a laboratory and surrogate mother&emdash;none of this comes close to what sexuality and love has meant to generations of human beings. As Leon Kass remarks, "Whether or not we know it, the severing of procreation from sex, love, and intimacy is inherently dehumanizing, no matter how good the product" (Kass, "Wisdom" 31).

Furthermore, with natural reproduction, we acknowledge that when a child is born, we will accept him or her for what he or she is, not what we had hoped for him or her to be. Human cloning changes reproduction from begetting to making&emdash;from procreating to manufacturing a human life. Sure, a clone will still develop into a human being like any other, but we have changed "man" into another "man-made object"&emdash;something molded and produced at our whim. When parents agree to have a child, they are accepting whatever nature decides their child to be, dyslexic, hearing-impaired, or mentally disabled; when parents decide to instead "manufacture" a child, they are saying that only a child who fulfills certain criteria will be accepted. But, if a cloning mishap returns a child who does not conform to all of the criteria, then are we agreeing to destroy that "specimen"? By accepting human cloning, we are changing our society from one that procreates with the blessings of nature, to one that manufactures human life for the sake of the "right qualities." As Leon Kass puts it, "Cloning isŠinherently despotic, for it seeks to make one's children one's own image (or an image of one's choosing) and their future according to one's will" ("Preventing a Brave New World" 2).

If human cloning poses such great risks, then what can be done to save the yet-to-be-cloned and society? The answer is a simple: ban human cloning. For all its potential benefits&emdash;regenerating lost loved ones, allowing infertile couples to have children, and so forth&emdash;the danger arising from the actual production of a clone is simply too great. Why permit a technology that perhaps only the rich will be able to use? That can be subjected to misuse by criminal minds? That will create a loss of individuality for the cloned "specimen"? That will ultimately shatter our value of what a human life really means?

Obviously with such powerful technology, government guidelines will not be sufficient: there will certainly be those who appear to be using cloning for "legitimate" purposes but are really using it for their personal benefit. As President Bush remarked, "Anything other than a total ban on human cloning would be virtually impossible to enforce. Cloned human embryos created for research would be widely available in laboratories and embryo farms. Once cloned embryos were available, implantation would take place. Even the tightest regulations and strict policing would not prevent or detect the birth of cloned babies" (18). His words raise the important issue of enforcing a ban on one type of human cloning while allowing another. How would it be possible to enforce this nationwide when law enforcement officials are already spread so thin by today's problems? More importantly, once an embryo is implanted, it would be impossible to tell from a glance whether a pregnant woman had developed the baby from sexual reproduction or human cloning techniques. Banning reproductive cloning while allowing research cloning would simply be ineffective given the inability to enforce such a ban, and the continuing risk for implantation of the embryo into a surrogate mother.

In light of these concerns, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a ban on all forms of human cloning in the United States in 2001, but the ban has met with some resistance in the Senate. The issue has largely centered on research cloning since most agree that human cloning for reproductive purposes should not be allowed, but research cloning could perhaps provide new insight into treating diseases. A report released in July 2002 by the President's Council on Bioethics voiced similar concerns. The seventeen-member board unanimously agreed that reproductive cloning is unethical and should be permanently banned. However, the board was split in regards to cloning for medical research purposes. Ten members voted to ban all research cloning while seven members argued to allow research cloning but under strict federal regulation. The ten-member majority thus recommended a four-year ban during which the Council would conduct a thorough federal review of current and anticipated practices of human cloning for research purposes (Dignity).

Meanwhile, the international community has also begun to take part in the human cloning debate. The United Nations created a committee to draft guidelines concerning human cloning, but as of November 19, 2002, no agreement could be reached. Whereas the United States and the Vatican proposed a ban on all forms of cloning, France and Germany were more open to the possibility of using human cloning for therapeutic purposes (Lederer).

Yet human cloning for therapeutic is not as safe or effective as proponents would like to claim. Some advocates may argue that by prohibiting cloning, we are refusing to save the lives of those dying from cancer or other terminal illnesses. Their reasoning is simple: human cloning would allow us to save those dying from kidney cancer by "manufacturing" a new kidney, and likewise, to save others dying from other illnesses as well. Yet, we should be suspect when there appear no initial disadvantages. In this case, the dangers are in disguise: if we clone humans to save other humans, we are harvesting organs&emdash;we are using human cloning as merely a manufacturing process for organs. And what happens when we take the new body part to donate to the other dying person? Obviously, we must kill the clone that the organ was taken from, since most likely, he or she will not be able to live normally. As a result, the value of a human life may become nothing more than a specimen that can be discarded as easily as a used product.

In addition, the use of human cloning as a replacement mechanism for transplants may not be as promising as originally thought. In a BBC report on cloning, it labeled cloning as an imprecise science. New research which found that not all new cloned stem cells were always accepted by the target's immune system prompted further questioning as to whether human cloning would indeed be promising for research and therapeutic measures. In an interview with one of the creators of Dolly&emdash;the first mammal to be cloned&emdash;Professor Ian Wilmut remarked that "we would have to ask, is it possible that their cells will be as variable and their function perhaps slightly unpredictable as has been shown in these last experiments" (Nelson).

But when the issue comes to a recommendation of a ban, some proponents such Laurence Tribe, a Harvard College and Harvard Law School graduate, argue that just like our attempted bans on abortion and pre-marital sex, a ban on human cloning will be hard to enforce (Tribe 2). Yet, there is a difference between cloning and the two issues aforementioned: human cloning is still in its infancy. Obviously, once something becomes popular, the prevention of its practice becomes nearly impossible since it is so prevalent. Pre-marital sex, meanwhile, is difficult to prevent simply because there is no formal law against it&emdash;and how could we possibly enact one when pre-marital sex is usually under the consent of both individuals involved? But with cloning, we have yet to clone a human being, and moreover, we are still in debate as to whether human cloning should be allowed at all. Thus, a ban on human cloning at this point is feasible, but we need to act now.

As an issue that poses immediate threats to mankind, we simply cannot allow human cloning to begin, nor can we suggest that human cloning but with government oversight will be sufficient. For advocates who concede reproductive cloning but continue to support research cloning, a ban on one type while allowing another would simply be ineffective. Meanwhile, as the senate continues to debate the passage of anti-human cloning legislation, we should also do our part. Together, we need to voice a resounding no to human cloning advocates and companies: no to providing another avenue for misuse, no to a loss of identity for the cloned, no to the manufacturing of human life, no to the very idea of human cloning!

Bush, George W. "President Bush Calls on Senate to Back Human Cloning Ban." Print and audio text. 10 April 2002. 18 November 2002 <http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/04/print/20020410-4.html>.

Frontline. Interview. Making Babies: Interview with Lee Silver. PBS. WNET, New York. 1 June 1999. 18 November 2002 <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/fertility/interviews/silver.html>.

Gibbs, Nancy. "If We Have It, Do We Use It?" Time 13 September 1999. 16 November 2002 <http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,30505,00.html>.

Human Cloning and Human Dignity. 10 July 2002. The President's Council on Bioethics. 18 November 2002 < http://www.bioethics.gov/cloningreport/>.

Kass, Leon. "The Necessity of a Permanent Ban." In Cloning : Science and Society. Ed., Gary E. McCuen. Hudson, WI: GEM Publications Inc., 1998.

---. "Preventing a Brave New World." The New Republic 21 May 2001. 16 November 2002 <http://www.thenewrepublic.com/052101/2kass052101.html>.

---. "The Wisdom of Repugnance." In The Ethics of Human Cloning. Eds., Leon R. Kass and James Q. Wilson. Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1998.

Lederer, Edith M. "U.N. Treaty on Human Cloning Stalled." Associated Press. 19 November 2002. 19 November 2002 <http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=518&u=/ap/20021120/ap_on_re_eu/un_human_cloning_1&printer=1>.

Nelson, Sue. Interview. Cloning is an Imprecise Science: Interview with Ian Wilmut. BBC News. BBC, London. 6 July 2001.

Reproductive Cloning Basic Science. 28 August 2002. Center for Genetics and Society. 18 November 2002 <http://www.genetics-and-society.org/technologies/cloning/reproscience.html>.

Research Cloning Basic Science. 28 August 2002. Center for Genetics and Society. 18 November 2002 <http://www.genetics-and-society.org/technologies/cloning/researchscience.html>.

Tribe, Laurence H. "Seconds Thought on Cloning." Current Issues and Enduring Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking and Argument, with Readings. Eds. Sylvan Barney and Hugo Bedau. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999. 459-461.