Joseph Barillari
27 March 2002
Reproductive cloning, or the creation of a child that is genetically identical to another human being is subject to many objections, the best of which are discussed by bioethicist Leon Kass in [3] and [2]1: namely, that it constitutes unethical experimentation on children and that it harms genetic diversity. These are practical objections. The objection considered in this paper is more theoretical, touching upon the parent-child relationship and the intervention into reproduction of medical technology. It is the ``manufacture'' objection propounded by Dr. Kass, who argues that reproductive cloning is ``dehumanizing'' because it reduces the relationship between the cloned child and its parent from ``begetting'' to ``manufacture.'' [3]
Kass's objection starts with the premise that, as nature no longer casts the genetic die randomly, parents of a cloned child ``give existence to a being not by what we are but by what [they] intend and design.'' Consequently, the ``artificer'' of a ``manufactured'' child ``stands above it, not as an equal but as a superior, transcending it by his will and creative prowess,'' and will adopt an ``technocratic attitude'' which will ``dehumanize'' and ``commodif[y]'' the child. The child will suffer two additional insults: one, she will be subject to the so-called ``despot[ism]'' of parental ``expectations,'' and two she cannot ``blame'' her shortcomings on ``nature or the lottery of sex.'' He finally makes a digression into the expected progression from cloning to genetic engineering, and laments the ``enormous pressure'' that parents will feel to have their children's embryos edited for improvement. [3]
I argue that Kass's `manufacturing' objection and deteriorates under analysis, and submit the following refutation: first, that clonal reproduction is no closer to manufacture than careful partner selection, second, that even if clonal reproduction is indeed manufacture, nothing in our conception of manufacturing should necessarily discourage us from using its techniques in reproduction: ``dehumanizing'' parental attitudes are preexistent and cannot be ascribed to technology. I then address the twin dilemmas facing the `manufactured' child by concluding that overinflated parental expectations are hardly unique to cloned or genetically-engineered children, and that even if ``the lottery of sex'' [3] is rigged, one cannot control all of the environmental factors that shape a child. I conclude by following Kass's digression into genetic engineering, and I concede that parents will face strong pressure to have their children genetically engineered, a pressure we ought to welcome.
Kass's first asserts that cloning ``[transforms]... procreation into manufacture,'' and laments the ``commodification'' of children that will result. I begin my refutation with the obvious: does the rational and careful choice of a sexual partner constitute ``manufacturing'' a child? Obviously not. Does a doctor who unites an infertile couple's gametes in a petri dish ``manufacture'' an embryo? Does a couple who acts on a doctor's advice to implant one embryo instead of another ``manufacture'' the resulting child? Kass thinks so. [3]
Why the difference? Surely, the latter two cases require advanced technology. But Kass doesn't view the use of technology as in itself problematic. Instead, he claims that ``any child whose being, character, and capacities exist owing to human design does not stand on the same plane as its makers.'' [3]
Let us pick apart his meaning here. Are the ``character and capacities'' of a child conceived through IVF really owed to ``human design?''2 Only to the extent that the genetic parents selected each other through human design. No matter what combination of gametes a technician may pick, the child's genetic future is determined by the natural endowments of his parents. Until the editing of the human genome is possible, parents and technicians may only select from a range of possible children (any one of which may have occurred naturally), just as men and women can select from a range of possible partners. [3]
Is cloning different? Is choosing a complete zygote, instead of an ideal sperm and egg, any closer to manufacture? Not by any rational account. The nucleus-donor received his nuclei from the natural fusion of gametes. Cloning is manufacture if and only if selecting a product from a limited, preexisting inventory is equivalent to manufacturing it. Make no mistake: a cloned child is as much a product of a unity of gametes (traditional reproduction) as the cell donor was. In fact, donor and clone are product of the same union of gametes.
If this seems like facile reasoning, try the following thought experiment. Suppose that gametes were not subject to random chromosomal distribution. Humans would be capable of producing only two distinct gametes, their 46 chromosomes would always split into the same two sets of 23. Anyone who conceived a child would know that the child could possess only one of four possible genotypes, and could therefore, with one-in-four accuracy, choose the genotype of their offspring simply by picking a partner with the appropriate phenotype. In this case, partner selection is tantamount to embryo design. Is selection therefore equivalent to manufacture? Only if selecting one's partner is `manufacture.' Is this thought experiment disanalogous to the human condition? Only in that the probabilities are different in the real world. Kass is mistaken: cloning a child is not manufacture of a child. It is the selection of a preexisting, naturally conceived donor to create an embryo.
The analysis thus far has sought to show the tenacity of Kass's link between `manufacture' and clonal reproduction. Even if this analysis is incorrect, I posit that Kass can call `manufacture' an objection to reproductive cloning if and only if manufacturing precisely-engineered children is in itself objectionable. Kass proposes two reasons for why it is: the first is the the `superiority of producer' objection: that parents who engineer their children create an asymmetric relationship of producer to product. [3]
This argument is simply untenable in the case of clonal reproduction.3Parent and child have an inherently asymmetric and unequal relationship. One party is the creator, the other, the creation. This is not ``dehumanizing;'' this is the human condition.
Consider medical intervention: does the doctor who grafts a donor liver to a human body, and thus engineers or ``manufactures'' a healthier body from components (just as a technician ``manufactures'' an embryo from two gametes, or from an oocyte and a somatic cell), establish his superiority to his patient? He certainly demonstrates superior knowledge and skill. But it would be absurd to say that the doctor becomes a superior human being by performing a surgical procedure, or that his patient is ``dehumanized'' afterward. The same is true for doctors who perform the procedures necessary to clone children. Is it ``dehumanizing'' ``manufacture'' for a doctor's ``human design'' to facilitate conception? Only if medical technology is ``dehumanizing.'' Many people ``[owe]'' their continued ``being'' to antibiotics. Is that ``dehumanizing?'' [3]
To describe the parents of a cloned child as superior to that child is true only to the extent that every child's parents are superior to their creation. To imply anything more is ridiculous. [3]
Kass declares that ``the problem is not the mere intervention of technique,'' but rather that the use of technology to create a child will foster his parents' ``attitude'' that they ``[transcend]'' him through their ``will and creative prowess.'' If I'm not mistaken, this is an objection to the intervention of technique (obviously, there would be no objection if technology were not involved). The notion that a ``technocratic attitude'' will invade and destroy the parent/child relationship is entirely contingent on the parents' choice to adopt that ``attitude'' - one that parents of a traditionally-conceived child could just as easily adopt. The ability to lord-over one's children, or to ``commodif[y]'' them is hardly confined to clonal parents. Parents who would possess such an attitude do not acquire it by initiating cloning - it would have to exist beforehand, and is therefore a non-unique objection.4[3]
Kass's second harm of ``manufacture'' is twofold: the `responsibility' objection, that parents will be forced to answer for problems normally ascribed to the randomness of sexual reproduction, and the ``despotic expectations'' objection, where parents, having architected their child's genome, will have harmful ``expectations'' for their offspring. [3]
Consider the first objection of `responsibility.' Kass envisions a future where ``children will hold their cloners responsible for everything.'' He is correct in his implication that the ``lottery of sex'' provides a shield by which parents may deflect accusations of poor judgment, one that cannot be brandished by those using cloning and genetic engineering technology. However, there is no reason to expect that traditionally-conceived children will not ascribe their (lack of) attractiveness, intelligence, or athletic ability to their parents' choice of partners - children love to pin problems on other people. It is also a fallacy to suppose that genes are everything: as Bailey indicates below, environmental factors also shape development. Even if parents can clone a genome, they can't reproduce the donor's entire upbringing.
The second objection, ``despotic expectations,'' I shall address only briefly, because Bailey has provided an effective twofold refutation: point one is that even cloned children are unique, autonomous individuals, and parents can no more expect (or force) a cloned child to imitate the cell donor than they can expect (or force) two identical twins to have identical interests. A cloned child cannot be expected to mimic the original, Bailey notes. Nature and nurture control child development. A mildly different environment will change children in unforeseen ways. Bailey puts point two bluntly: ``a ban on cloning wouldn't abolish pushy parents.'' [1]
One might question5 the wisdom of giving parents a means by which they could duplicate an athletic star and force the unwilling child through a rigorous regimen of training (even if we admit that this sort of parenting is only facilitated by, not created by, cloning technology). While it is not my aim to address the larger question reproductive cloning's permissibility, I posit that these sort of abuses can be curbed by pre-screening of potential parents, just as sex-selection clinics today screen their customers.
The final component of Kass's `manufacture' objection are his worries that as genetic engineering technology becomes more widespread, the failure to use it will be regarded as ``child neglect.'' [3]6
I hold that it will. I concede this argument. Echoing Kass's digression on genetic engineering, I shall begin my own to show that such pressure should be welcomed.
Suppose that full-blown genetic editing were possible: not the sort of shot-in-the-dark recombinant DNA technology available today, but the ability to select an embryo's traits with complete accuracy. Would it be considered neglectful to not use such technology? Absolutely.
In years past, a mother could drink alcohol or smoke during pregnancy without objection. Today, not only would she face censure, she might even wind up in court for child abuse. Ever-expanding knowledge drives ever-expanding parental obligations. Even non-injurious omissions can be criminal: failure to send one's children to school (which is assuredly less debilitating then failing to go to a geneticist to switch off genes for hemophilia) can be punished with jail time.
Women rightly face criticism for failing to abide by proper nutrition before birth, and families rightly face criminal charges for failing to give their children ample medical care, nutrition, education, and the like. We should not lament, rather, we ought to welcome the pressures that compel parents to remove genetic obstacles to their children's well-being.
Kass argues that we have no measure by which to evaluate what makes a child ``better.'' True. But we can say what makes a child worse: neglecting to deactivate a gene for cystic fibrosis ought to be an outrage, just as is neglecting to immunize one's child against polio. We should welcome pressure to correct flaws. Parents will face a different, milder pressure to produce ``better'' children: the pressure that drives some parents to pour all of their resources into their offspring, and others to spend them in a more balanced fashion. There is a happy medium, a minimum parental responsibility, somewhere between eliminating obvious defects and painstakingly tweaking genes produce the best possible baby: we have found it in pre- and post-natal care, and we have found it in education. We will find it, quite easily, in genetic engineering. Parents ought to be pressured to meet that medium.
The tired ``master race'' objection, that social pressures will also compel parents to design uniformly blond, fair-skinned, blue-eyed athletic children, falls in face of two incontestable facts: (1) parents desire children who are genetically unharmed, but nonetheless look like they do, and (2) if such a latent but widespread desire for Aryan children existed, we would see a noted decrease today in the number of non-Aryan children walking the earth as other genetic stocks declined in popularity. No, genetic engineering would not produce uniformity of appearance - only a uniformity of health.
This concludes the digression on genetic engineering, which I hope has underscored the fact that even if Kass is correct in drawing a parallel between cloning and manufacture (and I argue that he is not), manufacturing children is still not in itself unethical. This, combined with the demonstration that overzealous guidance and ``dehumanizing'' ``technocratic'' ``attitude[s]'' [3] are the product of bad parents, not of reproductive technology, lays the `manufacture' objection to rest.
The preceding analysis does not mean that reproductive cloning is ethically permissible and ought not to be restricted; rather, it attacks Kass's `manufacture' reasoning as unpersuasive, often fallacious, and overbroad (it would forbid genetic engineering, something that parents have a moral obligation to undertake if they carry genetic diseases). The permissibility of reproductive cloning remains an open question. One conclusion is certain, however: Kass's ``manufacture'' objection is no reason to restrict it.
This paper contains approximately 2317 words (not counting title, author, date, this paragraph, or the References section). This paper represents my own work in accordance with University regulations.
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