Human Cloning - The Greatest Danger is Ignorance

Human Cloning – The Greatest Danger is Ignorance

The successful cloning of an adult sheep—in which the sheep's DNA was inserted

into an unfertilized sheep egg to produce

a lamb with identical DNA—generated an outpouring of ethical concerns. These

concerns are not about Dolly, the now famous sheep, nor even about the

considerable impact cloning may have on the animal breeding industry, but rather

about the possibility of cloning humans. For the most part, however, the ethical

concerns being raised are exaggerated and misplaced, because they are based on

erroneous views about what genes are and what they can do. The danger, therefore,

lies not in the power of the technology, but in the misunderstanding of its

significance.

Producing a clone of a human being would not amount to creating a "carbon copy"—

an automaton of the sort familiar from science fiction. It would be more like

producing a delayed identical twin. And just as identical twins are two separate

people—biologically, psychologically, morally and legally, though not

genetically—so a clone is a separate person from his or her non-contemporaneous

twin. To think otherwise is to embrace a belief in genetic determinism—the view

that genes determine everything about us, and that environmental factors or the

random events in human development are utterly insignificant. The overwhelming

consensus among geneticists is that genetic determinism is false.

As geneticists have come to understand the ways in which genes operate, they

have also become aware of the myriad ways in which the environment affects their

"expression." The genetic contribution to the simplest physical traits, such as

height and hair color, is significantly mediated by environmental factors. And

the genetic contribution to the traits we value most deeply, from intelligence

to compassion, is conceded by even the most enthusiastic genetic researchers to

be limited and indirect. Indeed, we need only appeal to our ordinary experience

with identical twins—that they are different people despite their similarities—

to appreciate that genetic determinism is false.

Furthermore, because of the extra steps involved, cloning will probably always

be riskier—that is, less likely to result in a live birth—than in vitro

fertilization (IVF) and embryo transfer. (It took more than 275 attempts before

the researchers were able to obtain a successful sheep clone. While cloning

methods may improve, we should note that even standard IVF techniques typically

have a success rate of less than 20 percent.) So why would anyone go to the

trouble of cloning?

There are, of course, a few reasons people might go to the trouble, and so it's

worth pondering what they think they might accomplish, and what sort of ethical