c. 2003 Religion News Service

(David P. Gushee is an associate professor of moral philosophy at Union University in Jackson, Tenn.)

(UNDATED) Last month’s claim by a group called Clonaid that it had produced the first cloned baby has not been independently verified. However, the group should not be taken lightly, despite its wacky belief that aliens created human life on Earth.

For several years both this group and at least one other, based in Italy, have been working aggressively to achieve the birth of the first human clone.

The Clonaid announcement was met with predictable howls of outrage.

But those of us who oppose cloning _ in this case, reproductive cloning, or cloning to produce children _ risk being dismissed as merely anti-science and anti-progress unless we get our facts straight, communicate them clearly in the public arena, and offer a cogent statement of moral concerns about cloning that can make sense to large numbers of people.

Human cloning is a form of asexual reproduction in which the genetic makeup of a single human individual is deliberately replicated. If brought to birth, the new individual is genetically virtually identical to the person from whom their genetic materials came.

It is a revolution in human reproduction because for the first time in history it makes it possible to bring a new human being into the world without use of the genetic materials of two people, but instead only one.

Animal cloning was first successfully attempted in 1997. It has not been known if human reproductive cloning was even possible.

News reports indicated the new baby, “Eve,” is the clone of a 31-year-old married American woman whose husband is infertile. Eve will be a virtual twin of her mother.

Advocates of reproductive cloning are interested in it for several reasons: Perhaps the main practical application is as yet another form of reproductive technology for individuals and couples unable to conceive a child otherwise, apparently as is the case here.

There are, however, other even more disturbing motivations leading some to support reproductive cloning, such as replicating a dying person or a person of great talent or beauty.

The leading objection to reproductive cloning offered in public debate has been, and continues to be, that it violates cardinal principles of scientific research. In particular, it constitutes unethical experimentation on a nonconsenting human subject. Failure rates of animal cloning have been quite high, both in terms of fetal losses and strange anomalies of cloned animals that do make it to birth.

Human clones are more likely to die in utero, and are at grave risk of monstrous birth defects or other health maladies if born. Clonaid itself admitted that of 10 clones they have implanted thus far, five were spontaneously terminated during the first few weeks of pregnancy.

But even if these “technical” problems could be resolved, there are deeper moral objections to cloning.

The fundamental issue, in my view, is intergenerational justice. Cloning is yet another example of adults seeking to meet what they consider to be a need in their lives at the expense of children, who cannot speak for or protect themselves.

It is easy to anticipate the negative impact of cloning on children. Several of these concerns were noted by the President’s Council on Bioethics in its July 2002 report on cloning. The council was concerned, for example, that cloned children could encounter grave problems of identity and individuality, in light of their having been copied from an “original” whose life course would shadow the new child from his or her first day.

The council also expressed the worry that cloning would deepen a trend toward the increased commercialization and industrialization of human reproduction, with children viewed as yet another marketplace product to be bought and sold.

Council members also voiced concern about the strains likely to be inflicted on family relations, both among the multiple generations of the same family and in terms of (post)marital relations in a culture of divorce.

Reproductive cloning transgresses gravely important moral boundaries. It should be banned by Congress this spring, and around the world as soon as possible.

DEA END GUSHEE