The Way the Cloning Wind is Blowing
Australia has voted to end its former complete ban on human cloning. What is interesting is that this change wasn't made because of new breakthroughs in the science. There haven't been any--except with adult and umbilical cord blood stem cells. Rather, it was founded on pure hype, repeatedly made, and backed by bounteous bucks. Even though human cloning has not yet been done successfully, at least with the embryos maintained to the point that ES cells could be derived, lawmakers were awash with promises of CURES! CURES! CURES! and the threat, yet again, that unless the country gave Big Biotech exactly what it wanted, the Aussies would fall behind in science.
The Australian decision to explicitly legalize the creation of human life for the purposes of researching upon it and destroying it--which is an echo of the National Academy of Sciences so-called "ethical" guidelines--is a vivid demonstration that the Establishment is all for commodifying and utilitizing human life.
The power of money in politics, mixed with media bias, is a potent political force. I expect that cloning permissibility will become the general default setting, with bans (for now) on reproductive cloning. The next fight will be over public funding. If that is lost, and if cloning works, in ten to twenty years we will be arguing over the ethical permissibility of fetal farming. I mean why not? The principle that we can use nascent life like a corn crop is being firmly established.
Still, that doesn't mean we give up. "Speaking truth to power," a phrase I loathe but which seems apt here, is never easy. Those of us seeking to promote a biotechnology that does not dehumanize have an obligation to continue on. After all, tomorrow is another day.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 7:22 AM
7 Comments
7 Comments:
It's actually immoral to make what is called "reproductive cloning" illegal when you have legalized the initial cloning process. This makes it illegal to treat any embryo created by cloning as a human person and to implant it. It requires killing it.
I can't help wondering what would happen if such embryos were made in the lab, if one were implanted in a woman, and if she then did not want to have it aborted. In the long run, would not a "ban on reproductive cloning" require punishing women for giving birth?
I know this is all in the future at the present, but if human embryos, apparently normal, are made by cloning, there is no reason why it should not come to this in the end--a requirement to abort. And if implantation is made illegal, it would then still be a requirement to destroy human embryos. A pro-life scientist who (somehow) came into possession of such embryos in a frozen state would be required to engage in civil disobedience, in my opinion.
I typically don't chime in when I agree, but I think Lydia's logic is sound.
But, that said, I think it's a remote possibility. Thinking practically, which woman would want that?
But, to play devil's advocate, I guess the answer is simple - a paid surrogate.
Yes, but the paid surrogate might change her mind. It happens in other cases (back to that in a minute). Pregnancy is a state in which, hormonally, you're pretty inclined to feel nurturing. A woman who entered into an agreement to have a cloned embryo implanted for "therapeutic research" purposes and aborted part of the way through might come to feel differently in the actual situation. Then what? The scientist is going to be in trouble if the child is brought to term, because that will mean his research ended up being "reproductive cloning." What pressures would be available to him to put on the woman in that case?
Related: Surrogate mothers sometimes don't want to give up their newborns. Maggie Gallagher at National Review has been talking loudly about this for something like fifteen years. She had one story (this was back when there was no Internet, and I read it in NR on Dead Tree) about a woman who was literally nursing, breastfeeding, her newborn baby (if I remember correctly it was even hers biologically, by artificial insemination), and the police came with a court order and took the baby away over her loud protests, because she'd entered into a prior surrogacy contract.
While in some ways giving up a child after birth might be harder than having an abortion, in other ways it would be easier. Here I'm not talking about morality so much as psychology. You might bond more with the baby at birth, but at least you would know it was going to people that loved it. In the case of the abortion, you're agreeing to have it actively torn up. Not to mention the fact that abortion is not physically pleasant.
In other words, if we get to the point of implanting cloned embryos with a prohibition on "reproductive cloning" in place, I think it's almost inevitable that some woman will change her mind and rebel. What happens after that will be of more than passing interest.
Again, just as in the case in Missouri, we should be angry/disappointed about the vote in Australia, but heartened at how close it was. These issues are being hotly debated everywhere they're being suggested; wasn't the Senate vote decided something like 84-82?
Also, at least they're actually using the accurate term "cloning" rather than euphemizing the stuffing out of it.
Of course, with our luck they'll pull off that artificial womb thing that Wesley mentioned and then the part about "surroget motherhood" becomes a moot point, meaning that scientists will be able to breed their own disposable people in little boxes, then smush the life out of them when the game's over. At that point screaming about a baby's rights will seem "silly" to the establishment because how can this bundle of cells sitting inside a giant liquid-filled computer be a little person?
I mean, aside from the fact that it has complete human DNA and develops as a human and all that jazz...
bmmg39: Perhaps, but close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. The more people vote for it, the greater pressure on others to go along. Not sure where the fire wall will be, but we have to find it.
GO the aussies :)
Stem Cell Research In Australia
http://beepbeepitsme.blogspot.com/2006/12/stem-cell-research-in-australia.html
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