Those wacky Raelians claim to have cloned a human baby, but suddenly there’s a question on whether a DNA test will be done after all. Of course, these are people who want us to take on faith that we all come from aliens, so I suppose they don’t have much tolerance for skeptics on the cloning thing either.
Despite the fact that this is evidently a hoax, human cloning will be a reality in the not-so-distant future. I had the opportunity, while on vacation, to discuss the potential ethical ramifications with several people including a relative who’s a very knowledgeable professor, and what emerged was fascinating and more than a little disturbing.
The question was this: assume, for the sake of argument, that human cloning can be done safely without risk of harm to the mother or the baby (this assumption can’t be made right now but it will be reality soon enough). Would it then be ethical to clone human beings?
My argument was that the process itself would be ethically neutral, as simply another technology, but that the ethical questions would emerge in terms of the motives and the potential consequences. It was pointed out to me that technology is not necessarily neutral, since there are purely negative technologies, with sole purposes of creating harm (such as those used to create atom bombs, for example).
But since scientific knowledge inevitably moves forwards, it is impossible to put the genie back in the bottle, so to speak. So if the technology to clone humans will inevitably exist, what are the ethical ramifications?
Motive is one. Will the technology be used to genetically engineer “perfect” babies? Is a Gattaca-like universe not far off? Or will it be used to help infertile couples, cure terminal diseases, and better the lives of all? Who will control the technology – democratic governments, or the wealthy?
Then of course the questions of consequences emerge. Will we create a world in which men are unnecessary? Can clones be considered as human as “natural” babies? More so? Is this merely another stage of evolution at work – the next step, so to speak? Is something inherently wrong because it’s “unnatural”? After all, plenty of unnatural things are considered perfectly fine – everything from in-vitero fertilization to giving a woman in labour an epidural. Is our knee-jerk negative reaction to human cloning more of a conditioned disgust rather than a well thought-out objection?
Despite all of this, I still think human cloning is dangerous, and my instinct is to say it’s unethical as well. Canada is in the process of enacting legislation against it and I’d probably support it. But all these questions are bound to come up again soon, and the Raelians may be forcing our society to deal with them sooner rather than later.