HUMAN
LIFE IS NOT SHEEP:
AN
ETHICAL PERSPECTIVE ON CLONING
On 22 February 1997 the media was abuzz with
the announcement that some Scottish geneticists had (back some eight months
earlier, actually) successfully cloned (copied) a sheep--Dolly by name[1].
Quite understandably the Scottish achievement of sheep-cloning was treated as a
newsworthy milestone in the smoothly speeding advance of modern biotechnology.
Not since the advent in the late-1970s of little Louise Brown, the celebrated
first test-tube baby, has public attention been so focused on the biological
revolution underway in our time.[2]
The thing that made Dolly loom so large, of
course, was that she signaled the imminent feasibility of applying comparable
procedures and technology to the cloning of human beings. And this prospect has
sent everyone scrambling. Arthur L. Caplan, director of the Center for
Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, admits that unfortunately Awe don=t have the legal and ethical basis to handle [these rapid developments]
yet.@[3]
Prudence urges that we ought to proceed
slowly on a matter of such potentially great import. Consequently the United
Nations, American President Bill Clinton and others have issued cautious
statements that are essentially designed to buy some time--to carve out some Abreathing space@--to weigh the implications of this new capability for shaping
humanity. This article is an attempt to take advantage of this breathing space
to reflect on the ethical aspects of cloning from a Christian perspective.
Admittedly, there is a cozy, parochial flavor
to this topic, for cloning has emerged as an issue for serious consideration
only in the relatively affluent and technologically-advanced nations of the
world. From a global perspective, there is something embarrassing about dealing
with something so unreal to the great majority of human beings in their gritty
struggle merely to survive. A sense of moral proportion would suggest that
other less-esoteric issues have a greater claim upon our attention. In our own
proscribed context, however, we must reluctantly acknowledge that the issue of
cloning has surfaced, and therefore cannot safely be ignored.
By the nature of its discussion this article
belongs to the sprawling field of bioethics, and more precisely to its
subdivision of genetic ethics. Even so it will not address genetic therapies,
nor touch on the ominous issues associated with recombinant DNA (fusing genetic
material into new combinations). Indeed, it considers just one, and that a
relatively small, aspect of genetic engineering, namely, the cloning of human
beings.
The thesis of this article is that Christian
concern regarding human cloning need not be rooted in doubts about whether
cloned persons will be fully human. Neither should Christians argue that such
an arena of genetic engineering ought to be permanently and artificially
cordoned off from human initiative on the grounds that any such human
interventions would amount to Aplaying God.@
Rather, Christians ought to encourage a moratorium on human cloning because
there do not appear to be, at least at present, any motives or reasons for cloning that accord well with
the divine design for human existence.[4]
I. THE NUTS AND BOLTS OF CLONING
Bio-medical research is perhaps the most
dynamic and strategic sphere of scientific advance today. It explores a
pulsating micro-universe no less wondrous than the macro-universe of space and
astronomy, and from it are issuing new and unprecedented capabilities to
inaugurate human life, to affect its quality and alter its contours, and then,
as each life draws inexorably to a close, to determine its duration and set the
moment of its termination. The whole intent of such research applications is to
become more involved and benevolently intentional in matters of creating and
sustaining life, and thus not to leave so much to chance.
Bioethics, or medical ethics, is a burgeoning
field, and ethicists who hope to stay abreast of the myriad of new issues and
dilemmas raised by these developments are, among other things, obliged to
familiarize themselves with an ever-expanding glossary of strange new terms.
Among these is Agenetic engineering@ (the 1965 coinage of this term indicates the
relative novelty of this field)[5].
It refers to human interventions to manipulate or alter the internal
design-patterns--the architecture--of living cells. All organisms (including
plants and animals, as well as humans) are comprised of cells which have an
amazing power to grow rapidly through division and multiplication. Every cell
so generated contains the same comprehensive and determinative genetic code as
the one from which it originated. Genetic engineering has advanced very rapidly
due to technological discoveries that have allowed scientists to manipulate the
genetic information carried inside cells. These discoveries led to the advent
of cloning--the ability to make identical copies of genetic material.
The genetic configuration of human beings
consists of approximately 100,000 genes, each shaped like a long swirling
ladder in the now-famous double-helix pattern, and built of a chemical material
known most commonly now by its simple acronym DNA. This human gene
configuration (or genome) has a total
of about three billion distinct variables within its code. The differences, for
example, between liver and skin cells, are differences determined simply by
which ones of this vast number of variables are, so to speak, switched on, and
which are left off and inoperative.
At the same time even the slightest gap or
anomaly in the code can result in a debilitating disease or disfigurement. To
refine our ability to identify such flaws will be a quantum leap forward in
medical diagnostics; to begin to be able to correct them is an incredibly
promising new frontier in health science. To this end, the Human Genome
Project--sustained by substantial American government funding--began in 1989
with the goal of comprehensively mapping the human gene configuration. The
project still has a way to go, but the prospects are realistic now for
literally uncovering the full blueprint to human life.[6]
Human procreation, like the reproduction of
most other life forms, occurs through the fusion of male (sperm) and female
(egg) cells. These reproductive cells are unique among cells inasmuch as they
each contain only one precise and symmetrical half (rather than the whole) of
the genetic code necessary for the creation of a unique new cell, which will be
capable in its turn of rapid growth--of cell reproduction after its kind. Each
new life form (in this instance, human cell), then, is a synthetic product of
the matched contributions of the two originating biological organisms.
Cloning is made possible by altering this
normal process in such a way that the genetic make-up of the newly-created life
form is not unique, but instead is the exact replica of an already-existing
cell. By one laboratory technique or another, the existing genetic material in
the nucleus (or core) of an egg cell (amounting to exactly half of the total
code necessary) is eliminated and destroyed. In its place, then, the complete
genetic code from another cell is fused into the (now empty or enucleated) egg
cell. This egg cell is then activated or stimulated into beginning to reproduce
itself and grow. An organism so engineered will be the perfect genetic match to
the organism from which the original code-bearing cell was taken.
Clearly the human product of such a
procedure--a cloned person--would not constitute a being entirely foreign or
monstrous to nature. Nature already produces, albeit relatively infrequently,
an analogous phenomenon in identical twins. Such twins are products of a sui
generis and perfectly symmetrical splitting of a cell after its
fertilization, and after the genetic alignments that created its unique genetic
code were settled. Consequently both twins acquire the identical genetic
coding. Cloning, therefore, is simply
the numerical extension of a natural phenomena, achieved through intentional
human intervention rather than passive openness to random natural factors. In noting this qualified analogy, however,
we certainly do not wish to minimize either the great remaining differences
between cloning and natural twinning, or the magnitude of this innovation and
its potential social consequences.
II. SOME GENUINE RISKS
Shortly after the initial announcement of the
Scottish sheep as a cause célèbre, Christian ethicist Gilbert Meilaender
correctly observed before the United States National Bioethics Advisory
Commission that unease about human cloning is widespread.[7]
Such unease is of course particularly intense among those who view technology=s track record in influencing the human
condition with disappointment and its prospects with suspicion. While some such
feelings may eventually prove unwarranted, there are nonetheless some rational
bases for this anxiety too. Here then, in sketch form, are some
frequently-cited risks thought to be inherent in the practice of human cloning.
A. Experimental
Casualties
First, there is the disturbing problem of
experimental casualties associated with cloning procedures. The success of
Scottish geneticists with Dolly, for example, was achieved in the context of
literally hundreds of failed attempts to produce a viable cloned embryo. Until
cloning procedures are perfected, there will be countless Abench embryos@ discarded and casually tossed away. Those who are convinced that human
life begins at the moment of conception (i.e., of the fertilization of an egg
and the creation of a viable zygote), and prior to the successful implantation
of this zygote, will be unable to endorse any such cloning experimentation on
this ground alone--except perhaps, by arguing in utilitarian fashion that Aa greater good@ may be achieved through these means.
Even those who do not hold to such a strict
interpretation of the inception of human life, however, must still be concerned
that human life is inevitably cheapened in our collective consciousness by such
casual laboratory manipulations. Given the estimates of pre-natal human life
that predominate in evangelical circles, it follows logically that most
evangelicals will oppose cloning experimentation until at least such time as
cloning procedures can guarantee embryo survival rates equal to or exceeding
those characteristic of natural procreation. Given the possibility that such a
time may well come, however, it would seem prudent for even the most
conservative Christians to consider other factors germane to a decision of
whether or not to clone humans.
B. Unforseen
Genetic Effects
Closely related to this is a second concern,
namely, that in the techniques of cell fusion and stimulation that are the
heart of cloning there lies a real risk of unforeseen and undesirable genetic
effects. Cloning involves such delicate procedures that there is always the
chance of inadvertent patching together of DNA or mutations arising
spontaneously during the process. The consequences could easily become hideous.
If such errors were detected early, it would force a decision between two
options: to abort the embryo or fetus, or brace the responsible parties
involved for the birth of an abnormal life. If the blunder remained
undetected--hidden or buried--in the vast genetic code, it might well function
as a biological time bomb that would not manifest itself for years to come.
C. Reduction
in Biodiversity
There is also a concern rooted in the need
for the human species to maintain a level of genetic diversity necessary to its
ongoing health. For example, in instances where a considerable portion of a
population were cloned from a few master gene codes, a disease that normally
kills only a small percent of a heterogeneous population might entirely wipe
out the homogenous cloned population. Additionally, for the same reason that
close relatives are discouraged from mating, it could be potentially dangerous
to reduce a population=s gene
pool. In instances where a considerable portion of a population were cloned
from a few Amaster@ gene codes, it would become increasingly difficult for each subsequent
generation to find genetically-safe partners of their own. Once a population
was built up through cloning, normal procreation (through the fusion of two
half-sets of genes) would no longer be a safe means for partners to generate
offspring. In other words, as cloning became socially pervasive, a society
would in effect become hooked on cloning, since it would constitute the only
remaining safe and viable way of carrying on. Viewing the issue from a higher
vantage point, we can also see that cloning on any scale would move humanity in
an increasingly monolithic direction. In a manner analogous to the reduction of
living species in our world today, which we mourn, the human race would begin
to lose some of the diversity that has been such a cause for celebration and
its resilient adaptability. Technological humans simply cannot compete with
nature when it comes to the generation of imaginative diversity.
D. Social
Control by the Few
Years ago C. S. Lewis pointed out that the
general population has little to no control over the emerging technologies that
shape our modern human experience. It is the gate-keepers, the technological
elite, who understand and control these new forms of power and exercise them
with only minimal accountability to the general populace. It is not difficult
to see this as a plausible scenario in the case of cloning as well. Lewis
correctly argued that science is value-less, and brilliant scientists are not
always ethically developed; in the end, it is their desires (the voice of raw
nature speaking) that will dictate what they will do and why.[8]
The concern is that the power to make such decisions as who is worthy to be
cloned, and what kind of people ought to be produced, exceeds what it safe to
confer on any sub-group of human society. At the very least structures of
public accountability are essential prerequisites to any further developments
along the cloning track.
E. The
End of Humanism: People Reduced to Commodities
Finally, there is the spectre that cloning
would both reflect and foster a view of persons as commodities. Functionalism
(an orientation to evaluate the worth of persons and things purely in terms of
their capacity for useful achievement) is obviously antithetical to humanistic
values. Some of the motives that make cloning appealing implicitly view cloned
persons as useful objects. And while we take to heart the caution that we
should we restrain our imaginations from running wild with mad-scientist
scenarios, it is not entirely beyond the conceivable that clones could become
marketed by cloning services, function as organ warehouses or a new slave
class, or almost certainly become vulnerable to an insidious strategy of Aquality control.@ Already decades ago Princeton ethicist Paul Ramsey discerned that the
real watershed in such matters of genetic engineering was going to be whether
human life would be viewed fundamentally as a gift or as a human fabrication.[9]
It is far from clear whether or how much longer the transcendent dimension of
human beings--the fact that we are not determined entirely by time-space
realities--will continue to be recognized; what does seem clear is that the
future of humanness and humaneness lies in the balance. This is a very
important consideration to which we intend to return shortly.
III. UNWARRANTED ANXIETIES
Before we do so, however, and rather by way
of prelude to such a discussion, it will be useful to eliminate from our
consideration a number of pseudo-concerns popularly raised by the prospect of
human cloning.
A. The
Humanity of Clones: Never Beyond Dignity
There is a popular fear that clones might
somehow be less than human, that they might not, as some people put it, have
souls. There is an extensive history of anxiety that fabricated beings might
lack an essential ingredient that only God can provide. It is the gist of Mary
Shelley=s 19th-century horror story about
Frankenstein=s monster, and the heart of the cybernetics
dilemma in the early 1980s movie Bladerunner. Similar anxieties were felt by some during an earlier debate over
whether test-tube babies (those conceived in an artificial in vitro
environment separate from a natural womb and without the aid of a sexual act
between parental partners) were fully human.
Gradually we are discovering that nature is
very generous and remarkably accommodating; evidently the forces toward life
are powerful indeed. Human life is legitimately human regardless of how
conventional or innovative the procedure was by which the embryo was formed and
began its own process of cellular development and growth[10].
There would probably be less anxiety on the part of Christians if they were
more consistently traducian in their understanding of the unity of the material
and immaterial aspects of human nature. It would then be clearer that
artificial means of conception are not spiritually destructive.
One also encounters concern that there is
only one Asoul@ for each unique genetic configuration, so that either there is no more
Asoul@ available for a person cloned, or that in some freakish way a single
soul is distributed between the original individual and each of the derivative
clones. These are bizarre speculations,
and not worthy of serious ethical treatment. A moment=s reflection on the personal integrity of
identical twins, despite their having an identical genetic code, ought to be
enough to settle the matter, but it keeps surfacing in grass-roots reactions.
Concerns of this sort issue from a flawed understanding of the soul as some
sort of distinct and quantifiable essence--an invisible thing--mysteriously
doled out by God to the more fortunate, and in other cases catastrophically
withheld from the permanently deficient. This sort of thinking would go away
if people came to understand the soul
correctly as the animating life principle that is the very essence of every
living person.
More is at stake on this point than might at
first appear. There is probably nothing potentially more crucial, by way of a
humanizing contribution from the Church, than that it bear unequivocal
testimony to the full humanity of every cloned person, and to each cloned person=s natural entitlement to all the rights and
privileges accorded other citizens. Unless this testimony is sustained, there
is every possibility that the dynamics of control implicit in cloning could
issue in all manner of sub-human treatment, exploitation and abuse, use as
living warehouses of perfectly-compatible spare parts and organs, proprietary
claims upon others, scientific experimentation, and indemnified or essentially
slave relationships. The best way to curb the dehumanizing potential of cloning,
and to dissuade those with sinister motivations, is to establish the full
humanity of clones from the very outset of this potential development.
B. Cloned
Persons Still Choice-Makers: Never Beyond Freedom
One frequently hears or reads of a concern
that clones would not be able to function as truly free moral agents, which was
God=s design for human beings, because everything
they would ever do or say would have been completely predetermined by the
genetic code that was engineered into them by someone else at the time of their
conception. Unlike Areal@ human beings, the argument goes, clones
would be automatons--mere pre-programmed inventions.
This objection is built on transparently
behaviorist assumptions. Why would a clone=s behavior be any more pre-determined by his or her genes than a normal
person=s behavior would be pre-set by theirs? Ted
Peters, an ethicist at Pacific Lutheran University, has recently published Playing
God? Genetic Determinism and Human Freedom (1997), a forceful attack on
what he calls the myth of genetic determinism. He points out that human
behavior actually issues from three sources, not one. Genetic factors are
admittedly significant, but equally decisive is an individual=s subsequent nurture and life experiences.
And there is always a third determinant: free will. Human consciousness attests
to the fact that humans, with our autonomous volition, are ultimately also
capable of transcendence over the very powerful influences of our own nature
and nurture. Cloning, then, does not raise the spectre of a dehumanizing
determinism, even though it does lay out the prospect of one or more persons
exercising a profoundly shaping influence on others. The issue is not whether a
clone would be free, but whether any other human ought to able to exercise such
a huge amount of influence over the shape of another=s personhood.
C. The
Spectre of APlaying God@
Contrary to popular assumptions, the
Christian tradition does not always draw a clear line of demarcation between
divine prerogatives and human privileges.[11]
In the grand creation account of the earliest chapters of Genesis, God the
Creator and Sovereign elects to fashion a creature like God, and then (contrary
to all the rules of power) voluntarily shares and delegates God=s own creative and supervisory prerogatives
to this being. Within the locus of God=s overarching dominion, they are to exercise dominion too. Endowed with
God-like powers, humanity--male and female alike--are mandated to use these
powers as privileged assistants to the sovereign Creator. From a Christian
perspective, science and technology obtain their legitimacy from this
paradigmatic biblical authorization. From the beginning of time, and by design,
we have been participants in the work of God. Humans are actually partners in
creation. We are Acreated
co-creators,@[12] and the only real question is whether we
will work with God or against Him.
The distinctive of the Christian view lies
not in the scope of operation it marks out in chalk on the ground, but in the
spirit and manner in which this human operation, sometimes referred to as the
cultural mandate, is pursued. As Douglas Webster puts it simply: ASometimes the line between playing God and
serving humanity can be in the heart and in the motive.@[13] The human mandate is to be pursued in the
presence of God, in relationship to God, and with an intent to see God=s will and ways fleshed out in human
structures and experience. All the pathological manifestations of human
attempts to express their God-like powers issue from the human inclination to
proceed autonomously from God--to do it our way. Many commentators on the Genesis account of the Fall detect the
essence of this Original Sin to be a passion for knowledge (and the power that
knowledge brings) separate from the presence, and in rebellion against the
will, of God the Creator.
The traditional understanding of the Devil=s origins is that of a supreme angel who
succumbed to envy and hubris, leading him to launch an unsuccessful (and
ongoing) mutiny against God. His twisted initiatives since then are doomed
ultimately to failure, judgment and everlasting destruction. While the biblical grounds for this
speculation may be inconclusive, the theory offers a telling metaphor for the
essential dynamics of human sin. God-like humanity, endowed with unbelievable
potential, flounders by its choice to proceed autonomously and in defiance of
God. The consistent testimony of all the biblical writers is that the human
enterprise, pursued on such an autonomous basis, is doomed to failure. The
inevitable outcome of such wrong-headed efforts is dehumanized experience and,
ultimately, death.
It is naive to assume that this delegated
sovereignty which humans are entitled to exercise must never encroach on the
sphere of humanity=s own
life and existence. If this were so, for example, there could be no divine
permission for life-support systems. In fact, there would be no profession of
medicine, and no skilled hands of healing. There would be only a dull
submission to the brutal and painful tendencies of nature gone awry. Certainly
there would be no aids to fertility, no forms of birth but natural, and no
reproductive technologies. Nothing but fatalism.
There is a hyper-conservative mindset that
thinks: AIf we were meant to fly, God would gave given
us wings.@[14] Such a view appears to have more in keeping
with Jean-Jacques Rousseau=s romantic vision of a sin-free Nature than with a realistic biblical
view of our sin-debilitated world. The natural way may be neither the only way
nor even the best--we simply cannot equate the primitive with the right. We are
to be co-creators with God; the growing awkwardness of our situation lies in
the fact that our sphere of influence seems to be ever-expanding.
Clearly our God-given prerogatives entitle us
to be engaged in matters of human life and death. The challenge, however, is to
proceed in these privileges and responsibilities in a manner resonant with God=s estimation of and intent for humanity. We need to discern the deeper design for
humanity that could guide those laboring to have dominion over nature, to bring
order to chaos, to counter sin=s effects, to domesticate wild animals, and to carve a garden out of
the wilderness.
IV. DISCERNING GOD=S DESIGN FOR HUMANITY
As with so many areas of expanding human
control over human life itself, so with cloning the real issue shakes down (for
secularists) to what kind of humanity we want to become, and (for
Christians) to what kind of humanity we ought to become. Obviously there
is an essentially physical and material dimension to being human. But equally
so there is a less-frequently acknowledged ideal pattern or vision of human
behaving and relating that helps to define what it is to be truly human. In
this sense humanness is also an idea and a social construct. In his The
Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis spoke derisively of those blinkered
savants who ignore this dimension of being human, and thus become themselves,
in his vivid phrases, Atrousered
apes@ and Amen without chests.@ There is no heart left, he felt, only brain and biological
functioning. The tragic result is that they are reduced to functioning at a
level less than fully human.
Not the least of the gifts of revelation is
the template it provides concerning what it means to live humanly. Homo-sapiens
are constantly deciding about the degree to which they will be human or not.
The divine pattern for human existence is branded into universal human
consciousness and more clearly proclaimed in Scripture, but it remains
nonetheless an option for self-determining homo-sapiens. The challenge before
us as created co-creators is to stay synchronized with the Creator=s design, and to help bring reality into
ever-closer accord with it. The biblically-revealed template for living humanly
involves certain profoundly important (and overlapping) elements which, we will
endeavor to show, do not appear compatible with cloning as we presently
understand it.
A. Premised
on Humanity=s Value
True humanness builds on a recognition of the
sanctity--the sacredness--of human life in all its forms and stages. It goes
beyond a commendable reverence for life forms generally by insisting on a
distinct and superior classification (viz., actual God-likeness) for human
life. As contemporary culture reacts, and the pendulum swings, against the
historically-destructive consequences of humanity acting as nature=s irresponsible and hostile adversary, there
is a powerful appeal to a newer emphasis on our deeply enmeshed and
interdependent place in the seamless web of the biosphere. While supportive of
dimensions of this shift, Christians must nonetheless resist every tendency to
thereby diminish by leveling the unique status and worth of humanity in the
cosmos.
A Christian perspective involves an
acknowledgment that no manipulative technology can ultimately throw a ring
around a human being, since humans possess authentic volition and are also
capable of access to a transcendent and autonomous dimension of the spirit. We
are cosmic amphibians, so to speak, who defy definition or explanation according
to chemical and biological facts alone. While we are part of nature, we also
transcend it. Moreover, that which evokes reverence for human life, and an
abhorrence of its destruction, is not conditional upon relative individual
capacity to function usefully or impressively. It inheres in every person
merely by reason of their claim to humanness. It demands a fittingly
reverential treatment.
B. Human
Life as Nurtured Life
Human offspring do not hit the deck running.
We are not up on their feet in a few hours. It is essential to the revealed
design for human life that persons be nurtured physically and emotionally from
birth to maturity, and by other means ever after that as well. It is, in other
words, dehumanizing not to be loved. And as Jon Sobrino has pointed out in the
context of Two-Thirds World suffering and First World indifference, to fail to
love the poor not only demeans and dehumanizes them; it also has dehumanizing
effects on those who refuse to love and nurture.[15]
If homo-sapiens are to live by the
divine template for humanness, we must work to ensure that all human beings
have secure and nurturing familial experiences. Such conditions appear
essential and foundational to personal wholeness and strength. Science must
cooperate with the requirements of healthy human sociology. The human tradition
demands that there be a human care envelope for each human life, and that this
be treated as a basic right and its absence as an outrage.
C. Human
Fulfilment In the Absence of Control
Inasmuch as humanity possesses a likeness to
a God who is triune, being human involves an essential capacity for
relationship. That which lies at the heart of being human is a capacity for
fully-interpersonal interdependence. The experience of such authentic unity in
relationship is never at the expense of personal identity.
The main point here is that acts of control
are hostile to authentic relationships, which have an essentially symbiotic
character. The driving passion of technological Man, and the society being constructed
by this figure, is the power to control. But as James Houston and others have
observed, the relinquishing of control is an essential precondition to any
authentic relationship. Relationships of this sort elude the domineering
personality.[16] It
involves, as Richard Foster puts it, speaking in the middle voice--neither
imposing nor quietist, but always alert and open to the other.[17]
A passion for control produces a culture of loneliness, unrestrained
self-interest and isolation. It is ultimately dehumanizing.
This positive requirement of all truly human
relationships is implicitly present when a child is sexually procreated within
a marriage relationship. In such a context the child is always a derivative
gift and consequence of love, never a primary project.[18]
The burden of proof is necessarily then with any alternative technology and
sociology of reproduction (including cloning) to show that it can replicate
such an essential ethos.
D. Uniqueness
and Belonging
While there is a powerful social dimension to
the Christian vision for human existence, great significance continues to be
ascribed to the singular life and unmerged identity of the individual person.
Reincarnation, for example, is held to be a false description of the real
pattern of human existence, and contrary to the musings of pantheists and
philosophical monists it is emphatically denied that there is any real
continuation of self-conscious personal existence in the lives of one=s offspring and descendants. No one can be
the perfect replacement for another, and Christians take as confirmation of
this view that every human spirit cries out against expectations and pressures
to be someone else.
As a counterweight to this affirmation of
individual identity, the Christian vision acknowledges humans= felt-need also to belong to a tradition
larger than our individual selves, and to know and feel part of a story that
transcends our personal autobiography. In one of the earliest thoughtful
responses to the breaking story of Dolly and cloning, George Will of the Washington
Post pointed out that Aconnections with parents, siblings and ancestors are integral to being
human.@ It is in the balanced blending of these two
themes of uniqueness and belonging that personal wholeness lies.
Valparaiso University ethicist Gilbert
Meilaender offers some compelling suggestions on how the dynamics of natural
human procreation are particularly compatible with and supportive of this
classic balance. According to Meilaender, the procreation (or, in biblical
language, the begetting) of a child so blends the respective biological
contributions of both parents that their offspring is simultaneously a unique
and separate individual, and yet one profoundly and indissolubly connected to
their deepest selves. As Meilaender explains:
Our
children begin with a kind of genetic independence of us, their parents. They
replicate neither their father nor their mother. That is a reminder of the
independence that we must eventually grant to them and for which it is our duty
to prepare them.[19]
There is an awesome sense of the Aotherness@of the
child, and yet also such a profound experience of empathy and identification
that a commitment to lifelong nurture and unconditional love is the most
natural response possible.
There is another important nuance to this
matter. It has been said (in an obvious allusion to Nicene Christology) that
intergenerationally we also must be begotten, not made. Following Oliver O=Donovan=s line of theological reflection, Meilaender argues that just as
Johannine language of begottenness was used to protect Christ against the
inferior status imposed upon him by the Arians, and employed to affirm that he
was of the same substance as God the Father (C. S. Lewis=s explanation that Abeavers beget beavers@ and AGod begat God@ also
comes to mind), so the language of begetting understands the child as our
equal.[20]
In summary, the divine template for living
humanly consists of an attitude of reverence towards humanity, and a commitment
to the nurturing of human relationships of intimacy and unconditional
commitment. It assumes that human life is essentially social, and that we find
our fulfilment in relationships which are necessarily characterized by
respectful mutuality rather than by external control. To live humanly is to
sense and celebrate one=s uniqueness in the context of a family, community and tradition which
provide an experience of belonging and a sense of identity. It is with this
template in mind that we turn to consider the possible motives behind cloning
scenarios.
V. THE APPEAL OF HUMAN CLONING
There is a strong human fascination with the
notion of cloning ourselves. The prospect of such a radical change to something
as basic and hitherto fixed as the manner of human reproduction is enormously
stimulating to the imagination. Perhaps too there is also a perverse attraction
to the idea precisely because it is so commonly depicted as a dangerous and
forbidden fruit. An even stronger stimulus comes from the axioms of pure
science, which will not allow scientists to rest content until that which is
possible is made actual. It is alien to the juggernautic advance of science,
and the restless curiosity of the human spirit, to permanently abort such a
fertile line of experimentation, and remain forever ignorant about what might
be. Like the mountain-climbers who determine, regardless of cost, to ascend
Mount Everest simply Abecause
it is there,@ there will be scientists who will experiment
in human cloning because they have the techniques to do so.[21]
There will need to be additional reasons for
cloning, beyond this principial drive of pure science, however, before cloning
will ever become a legitimized procedure and flourishing industry in the
societal mainstream. Products and services which survive in our market-driven
economy must do so by meeting perceived needs. If human cloning is ever going
to be domesticated in technologically-advanced societies like our own, there
will have to be motives for cloning that are adequate to sustain the practice.[22]
We read, for example, of individuals who are
attracted to cloning by a yearning for immortality. Feeling anxiety over the
brevity of life, they view it hopefully as a way to achieve a degree of
personal immortality by perpetuating something of themselves beyond their own personal
death.[23]
Perhaps a faintly-similar sentiment has been present in the historic instinct
of married persons to have children in order to Acarry on the family name.@ However, we already have more than enough clinical proof that
relational tension and family dysfunction will occur whenever this inclination
to view offspring as extensions of one=s personal ego takes precedence over the need to respect children as
separate, autonomous and self-directed persons.
Rooted deeply in Judeo-Christian concepts is
the Western conviction that individuals, though designed to find fulfilment in
relationships, are not designed ultimately to merge either their identities or
their consciousness into those of others. It is true that certain maudlin
sentiments to the contrary still circulate at funerals (e.g., APrincess Diana is still with us--just look at
Prince William=s face and posture@). However, only to the degree that monistic
Eastern thought supplants our Western intellectual heritage will such
aspirations for a kind of trans-personal immortality fuel cloning on any scale
whatsoever. Christians should offer no support whatsoever for what is so
patently a quest for immortality in all the wrong places.
Other individuals may be attracted to cloning
offspring because for a variety of reasons it appears to holds promise of
providing them with the children they most want. Clones could, for example, be
consoling substitutes for dying or life-threatened offspring. Parents might opt
for cloning because they cannot imagine loving any other child as much as they
love the one they are about to lose. But of course there is, in light of the
Christian template for humanness, an obvious problem here too. A sense of
personal uniqueness, implicitly reinforced and affirmed by others, is essential
to living as we were designed to experience life. To clone a second child with
this motive would be to demean it before it is born. Its personal value in the
parents= eyes would always be second-hand and
derivative at best. In such a scenario the parents= love for the former child would constitute
an unwitting cruelty to the surrogate.
Cloning is also touted as a way for parents
to leave nothing to chance, and of ensuring desired features in a child. It is
true that parents have always sought to influence positively the form of their
children, first by seeking a suitable mate (and their genetic contribution),
and then by such things as the pregnant mother eating well, exercising,
abstaining from smoking, and whatever else might be calculated to encourage
optimal prenatal development. Today through techniques of ultrasound and
amniocentesis prospective parents may preview their gestating offspring, and on
the basis of this available information make choices about whether to carry
them to full term. Cloning holds the promise of taking such expanding influence
over reproduction to the highest level of control by virtually eliminating
residual elements of unpredictability and risk altogether.
Our imaginations involuntarily leap to even
more radical and spectacular scenarios. For example, one might move beyond the
parenting relationship to purchase the cells of someone else=s child (or some current celebrity or
historic personage, for that matter) that was greatly admired. We might expect
that a cloned replica of oneself might well appeal to certain persons as the
ultimate vanity toy. It would not then seem too far-fetched to imagine the
possibilities for entrepreneurial business types (e.g., cloning laboratories
could issue annual catalogues of options for marketing purpose). Speculative
possibilities are endless.
The alternative to exercising such
reproductive control can easily be disparaged as Aa surrender to the mystery of the genetic lottery,@[24] but the fact remains that by some means or
another there must be sufficient acquiescence of parental control over
reproduction that the child born can be embraced as gift rather than
fabrication. This is the only perspective on a child that can resonate with the
human values of personal uniqueness, genuinely free volition and the right to
self-determination. Just as humanely Aletting die@ must
be the Christian alternative to the control-oriented practice of euthanasia at
the end of life, so the essential elements of freedom, indeterminacy and Agivenness@ must be present at the beginning in the conception of persons. Things
may be manufactured, but never persons.[25]
Our considerations now move from the personal
quest for immortality and the desire for ideal offspring to the public square,
which has been the main preoccupation of futurists. Social planners are
intrigued with the possibilities of cloning for an enhanced citizenry and
workforce. It is desirable for the welfare of society at large that it be
populated by more of the best, and less of the worst kinds of persons. This is
the vision of eugenics, with its ultimate goal of a super-race.[26]
People have also noted the desirability of a functional and efficient
workforce. Individuals with recognizable aptitudes for particular kinds of work
could be cloned to produce a cohort of workers who would not only be more
effective and efficient, but content with the performance of their appropriate
duties. It is assumed that evolutionary processes ensure such adaptations
normally, but over the course of intolerably-extended periods of time. Cloning
would be a convenient means of accelerating the proliferation of
optimally-adapted persons. Obviously everything would depend on the competence,
values and discernment of the social planners themselves.
The desires for an enhanced citizenry and a
synergistic workforce are certainly legitimate enough, but the danger lies in
pursuing these collective ideals by a means that puts in jeopardy the freedom
and happiness of the individuals involved. We have two concerns, and the first
of these lies in the human nurturing deficiencies (very possibly in an
institutional context) we anticipate would characterize such an agenda. While
reproductive technologies may provide legitimate alternative means of
procreating life, that which natural procreation symbolizes (Awe procreate new beings like ourselves in the
midst of our love for one another@)[27]must
be present in the conception and nurture of all children. Lester and Hefley put
it succinctly: AWhatever cloning scenarios develop, love,
relationship and procreation must be held together.@[28]
Our second concern is a historical
observation: similar caste, class and apartheid systems have been designed with
macro societal efficiency in view, but invariably at tremendous cost to the
human spirit at ground level. All efforts in social management ought to be
subordinated to the goal of nurturing persons capable of free association and
God-like self-determination. In the scenarios being contemplated, cloned
persons would be defined primarily by their intended function, which flagrantly
contradicts the fact that humans are meant ultimately to be rather than to do.[29]
Only a forgetful and a-historical culture could ever be duped into
reverting to notions so patently
prescriptive for Balkanizing society, human tragedy and oppression.
In summary, it seems clear that none of the
currently-envisioned reasons or motives for human cloning accord well at all
with the divine template for living in the human way. From an ethical
perspective, this issue is less about how much leash we ought to allow
biomedical scientists (and the autonomous citizens who may decide to hire their
services) and more about what kind of humanity we intend collectively to
become. The larger question is whether or not our society will be one in which
individual worth, nurturing, respectful (as opposed to controlling)
relationships, and a healthy symbiosis of differentiated identity in a larger
pattern of belonging, will remain core and defining values of our society.
VI. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
Cloned persons (should such emerge in time)
will certainly be fully human and in possession of authentic powers of
self-determination, and entitled therefore to equal status and rights alongside
all other members of the human race. While divine and human responsibilities
cannot be so strictly compartmentalized that cloning can be preemptively
dismissed as Aplaying God,@ it is imperative that a reproductive technology like cloning be
assessed with a view to discerning their compatibility with God=s design for living humanly.
There are a number of genuine risks involved
in cloning, and at this early stage of relatively primitive experimental
technique the prospect of embryo casualties ought to be enough to warrant a
moratorium on such experimentation with human life. Among the other risks are
unforseen genetic effects, reduced biodiversity and excessive social control by
a biotechnical elite. The latter of these will at the very least demand
carefully-designed structures of public accountability. But perhaps the most
subtle yet sobering risk lies in the social dynamic surrounding cloning;
namely, that people may be reduced even further in the cultural consciousness
to the level of mere manufactured commodities.
Obviously a utilitarian orientation towards
other human beings is already rampant in our culture, with seriously
deleterious and dehumanizing consequences wherever it manifests itself, but
this situation will only be exacerbated by any future legitimization of
cloning. Christianity insists that humans are unique in nature, unique by
reason of our authentic freedom, transcendence and singular Godlikeness. It
then offers a pattern of reverent and respectful human treatment consistent
with this. The church testifies that such a template constitutes the true and
only humanism, and must in its own community life seek to model this pattern of
humanity. Christians who hold this vision have every right to express and
promote our convictions in the increasingly-pluralist public square; indeed,
there is an urgency to do so, for it is rare for human values to endure long
without Christian buttressing. This testimony should always be given, however,
with what Richard Mouw has called Auncommon decency,@[30] and also with a sensitivity also to the fact
that our most persuasive witness will be through the compelling way of living
humanly that we model in our alternative communities as the Church.[31]
In conclusion, for now Christians ought to oppose and discourage human cloning
because there do not appear to be, at least at present, any motives or reasons
for cloning that accord well with the divine design for human existence.
ENDNOTES
1 In recent
years, sheep, cows and rabbits have been cloned using genetic information from
embryonic cells. A major question in science has been whether cells (other than
eggs or sperm) from adult animals still contain genetic instructions able to
guide the growth and development of a new animal. Dolly=s birth and development were remarkable since she was
made using genetic information from mammary gland cells of a 6-year old ewe.
This finding indicates that it may be possible to make clones (copies) of
adults from other species ( I. Wilmu, A.E. Schnieke, J. McWhir, A.J. Kind and
K.H.S. Campbell, AViable Offspring Derived From Fetal and Adult
Mammalian Cells,@ Nature 385 [1997] 810-813).
2 It led the
prudent Businessweek magazine to herald the coming new century as the
Biotech Century, and to predict that Acloning
animals is just the beginning. Thanks to fundamental advances in genetics,
biology will define scientific progress in the 21st century. It=s all happening faster than anyone expected.@ Even Nobel
prize-winning chemist Robert F. Curl concurs: AThis [the 20th century] was the century of physics and chemistry, but
it is clear that the next century will be the century of biology@ (ASpecial Report:
The Biotech Century,@ Businessweek, 10 March 1997, 79).
3 Ibid., 80.
The prospect of human cloning has been a matter of intermittent ethical reflection
since the 1960s, when Stanford University geneticist Joshua Lederberg began his
flamboyant advocacy of it. Still, as recently as 1993 ethicists John and Paul
Feinberg were assuring readers that Aat
current levels of knowledge and experiment, chances of successfully cloning a
human being are indeed remote@ (John S.
Feinberg and Paul D. Feinberg, Ethics for a Brave New World [Wheaton:
Crossway, 1993] 251).
4 Our
judgment, though essentially a negative verdict, is tentative because we think it wisest at this stage to abstain
from a categorical denunciation of human cloning. We must, after all, never
forget the Galileo debacle.
5 Ronald
Cole-Turner, The New Genesis: Theology and the Genetic Revolution
(Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1993) 27.
6 Francis S.
Collins, AThe Human Genome Project,@ in Genetic Ethics: Do the Ends Justify the Genes?,
eds. John F. Kilner, Rebecca D. Pentz and Frank E. Young (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1997) 95-103.
7 Gilbert
Meilaender, ABegetting and Cloning,@ First Things, no. 74 (June-July 1997) 41. Duane Heimbach, a
Southern Baptist ethicist, finds the potential for abuse Aabsolutely frightening.@ Bob Jones IV, ADouble Double Helix,@ World , 8 March 1997, 18.
8 C. S. Lewis,
The Abolition of Man (New York: Macmillan, 1947). This concern is
reaffirmed by John Kilner, Director of the Center for Bioethics and Human
Dignity in AStop Cloning Around,@ Christianity Today, 28 April 1997, 11. The sinister
possibilities of such power were imaginatively explored some years ago in Ira
Levin=s book cum a movie entitled The Boys from
Brazil, based on the idea of a crazed Nazi scientist in Brazil secretly
nurturing a cohort of Hitler-cloned boys in selected family situations
sociologically-comparable to Hitler=s
own upbringing.
9 Paul Ramsay, Fabricated Man: The Ethics
of Genetic Control (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1970).
10 There is
agreement on this point from conservatives Duane T. Gish and Clifford A.
Wilson, Manipulating Life: Where Does It Stop? (San Diego, CA: Master
Books, 1981) xiii, 173-174; and also from two ethicists in the Jerry Falwell
camp, Lane P. Lester and James C. Hefley, Cloning: Miracle or Menace
(Wheaton: Tyndale, 1980) 35-43.
11 For an insightful clarification of the sense in
which it is right and proper to Aplay
God,@ see Allen D. Verhey, APlaying God,@ in Genetic
Ethics, eds. Kilner and others, 60-73.
12 Philip Hefner is credited with coining this
term (Ted Peters, Playing God? Genetic Determinism and Human Freedom
[New York: Routledge, 1997] 33); the concept it represents is of course
venerable.
13 Quoted in
Sandi Dolbie, ACloning of Dolly Poses Challenge for Local Religious,
Ethics Leaders,@ San Diego Union-Tribute, 27 February 1997.
14 It is in this spirit that Duane Gish chooses, in
what must be regarded as a homiletical flourish, to interpret the Genesis tree
of life as symbolic of divine
prohibition against going too far in human biological experimentation ( Gish
and Wilson, Manipulating Life, 163, 214).
15 Jon Sobrino, The Principle of Mercy:
Taking the Crucified People From the Cross (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1994)
3-10.
16 This is a
central theme in James Houston=s understanding
of the prerequisites for both divine and human relationships; see his The
Transforming Power of Prayer (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1996) or earlier
printing entitled The Transforming Friendship (Oxford: Lion, 1989).
18 Meilaender, ABegetting
and Cloning,@ 42. Family relations get off to a bad start through
depersonalized and disembodied acts of begetting--tempting us to view children
as technical achievements rather than gifts of God. Allen Verhey, ATheology After Dolly,@ Christian Century (19-26 March 1997) 286.
20 Ibid., 41-42. Compare Oliver O=Donovan, Begotten or Made? (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1984).
21 Human
scientists are also intrigued by the possibility of deploying clone cohorts in
a vast array of significant research projects utilizing experimental
methodologies that require strictly-defined control groups and control
variables.
22 Popular
motives for cloning are summarized by Gareth Jones, Brave New People:
Ethical Issues at the Commencement of Life, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1985) 92-95; Feinberg and Feinberg, Ethics for a Brave New World,
249-250; Ramsey, Fabricated Man, 69-72; and Lester and Hefley, Cloning,
46-56.
23 This
motive, mixed with considerable hubris, is explored in David Rorvick=s provocative pseudo-novel, In His Image: The
Cloning of a Man (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1978), e.g., 33-34..
25 We may
perhaps be sympathetic to couples at risk of procreating children with genetic
disease, and most sympathetic to the infertile couples who are tempted to opt
for cloning one or the other of themselves, so that there is at least some
natural genetic connection to their offspring. AIf cloning is at all moral,@
suggest John Feinberg and Paul Feinberg, Athe
only moral use of it would be to give infertile heterosexual married couples
children.@ (Ethics for a Brave New World [Wheaton:
Crossway, 1993] 252). Even facing such dilemmas, it would seem most fair
towards the child for the parents to pursue alternatives that would ensure greater
personal differentiation from themselves.
26 See AEugenics
in Historical and Ethical Perspective,@ in
Genetic Ethics, eds. Kilner and others, 25-39.