BIOMEDICAL TECHNOLOGIES: CLONING

BIOMEDICAL TECHNOLOGIES: CLONING

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Index

Prolongation and enhancement of life

Cloning: what, how and why?

Benefits and a "right to cloning"

Revolution and Repulsion: The Failure of Rationality

Last considerations and personal opinion

A need for enhancement

• Medicine's duty has always been the enhancement and prolongation of life

• But... why is Ritalin OK while BCEs are sometimes opposed?

CLONING

And why we have such negative reactions to it

Dolly's case

• Created in 1996, Dolly the Sheep's case caused many controversies
• Is it legitimate/always OK to use the technology that we have developed?
• Ethical implications

Two ways of doing cloning

Cell mass division ("embryo splitting")

Nuclear transfer

• First done in 1996
• Involves replacing the nucleus of an egg cell and substituting it for a nucleus from a cell of another individual

• First done in 1993
• Separate early stage embryo's cells when they multiply → two embryos
• Uses: biopsy examination, efficiency when treating infertility

Cloning does not create two identical beings, it just creates two identical genotypes!

Cloning by cell splitting

The Hitlerargument

• The Boys from Brazil (1978)
• Could we replicate evil?
• Genotype ≠ character: twins...

“Hitler's genotype might conceivably produce a "gonadically challenged" individual of limited stature, but reliability in producing an evil and vicious megalomaniac is far more problematic”

John Harris

Are twins inherently unethical?

• If having natural identical twins isn’t unethical, why is it unethical to create twins deliberately?
• Also, most of the times the embryos that are used never fully develop as twins
• A very useful procedure in fertility treatment
• Even when straying away from utilitarism, and applying Kantian ethics, a cell being wasted into biopsy is the same as a clone being wasted into biopsy

Cloning by nuclear transfer

Dolly the Sheep (1996)

The most mediatic case, and the very first debates about cloning

• The first instance of successful nuclear transfer
• Her creation caused many concerns, and originated statements from WHO, UNESCO... condemning cloning
• The statements included arguments such as "the right to genetic identity"
• It is intuitive, but is there a justification, or any real argument behind that?

“How, we are entitled to ask, is the security of genetic material compromised? Is it less secure when inserted with precision by scientists, or when spread around with the characteristic negligence of the average human male?”

John Harris

Kantian ethics and a "right to cloning"

• Most vague arguments rely on the idea of “human dignity”
• But is the dignity of a twin threatened by the existence of their sibling?
• First actual argument: “treat everyone as an end, not merely as a means”
• It isn’t dignified to create life solely for creation of therapeutic material
• But when we take this extreme definition of “life”, we find plot holes: can’t receive blood transfusions (using the blood and donor as a means) or have abortions (sacrificing a "life" for one’s commodity, wellbeing or need)

• The question is not about Kant being wrong or right: the question is whether embryos fall under Kant’s scope

Is "the sanctity of the human genome" in jeopardy?

• European Parliament: “It permits a eugenic and racist selection of the human race”
• But things like sperm donation, abortion or choice of sexual partner also permit a selection of the human race. Is that eugenic?
• The thing is: eugenics start when we try to control a race or community, not when we exercise personal reproductive freedom

Ronald Dworkin's “procreative autonomy”

• “People have the right (and responsibility) to confront the most fundamental questions about the meaning and value of their own lives, answering to their own consciences and convictions”
• In short: people have the right to answer to what their own conscience tells them about the best way to raise a child.
• This includes freeing the child from any possible illness detected through biopsy, or, if you oppose cloning, freeing the child from pre-natal conditioning, for example.

The problems with cloning: playing God and repugnancy

Technological slavery

• Progressive movements: sex becomes less taboo and non-intrinsically procreative. Now, children should always be wanted.
• Problem: sooner or later, only children who fulfill our needs will be accepted.
• Aren’t we playing God?
• Gaining control over the future, while not being subject to control ourselves, but depending on technology → We become enslaved to it.

The Repugnancy Argument

• "Pseudo-argument": Repulsion is not an argument, but an emotional expression of wisdom
• Take incest, corpse mutilation or rape, for example. They are not wrong because someone argues rationally that they are immoral, it just intuitively feels wrong. It feels as if it were attacking the subconscious.
• Even if you could give rational arguments against those, would their wrongness be based on them? If one fails to argue why they are wrong, are they any less wrong?
• Cloning feels subject to this repugnancy, grotesqueness, uneasiness…

Repugnance as a way of revolting against uncontrolled willfullness:

"Shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to shudder"

Leon R. Kass

Failure begins when people stop reflecting on this viscerality.But why do we dissociate from those feelings?

The three main philosophical viewpoints

The reasons we dissociate from the horrors of cloning

Meliorist

• Cloning is a new prospect to improve humans
• “Optimum babies”.
• For valetudinarians and eugenicists

Libertarian

• Cloning is all about freedom: "reproductive autonomy"
• We have "the right" to reproduce as we please

Technological

• Cloning is just an extension of existing technologies
• Moral judgment depends on the use it is given

Rationality has failed us

Those standpoints are customary and merely descriptive

Meliorist: getting the goal wrong

Technological:no actual philosophy

Libertarian: shallow viewpoint

The only concerns are consent and damage to the body

Should we always strive for perfection or optimization?

Is technological progress alwaysfor the best?

“Though health and fitness are clearly great goods, there is something deeply disquieting in looking on our prospective children as artful products perfectible by genetic engineering, increasingly held to our willfully imposed designs, specifications, and margins of tolerable error.”

Leon R. Kass

Departing from biology: the need for anthropology

• What is the human condition? We need to look towards our systems of identity and relationships

• An exploitation of “loving one’s offspring just because it is one’s offspring”, so that children are not just produced but well cared for. But is that socially constructed exploitation necessarily bad?

• Human procreation does not have a single goal, but is a more complete activity, engaging us bodily, erotically, spiritually...
• The wisdom of nature is reflected in the pleasure of sex, the longing for union, the desire for children…
• THAT is the human condition!

Does banning cloning actually harm progress?

• It would stop progress on cloning specifically, but not outside of its domain
• A ban on cloning, or on any other maybe-unethical practices that may arise, would reassure the public that scientists are proceeding ethically.
• Also, this ban would deter scientists from cloning, since they would not be able to claim credit openly for their work.

My opinion andpersonal considerations

• It is actually something which does not need to or can use words for its grotesqueness.
• I am against making scientific progress just because we can.
• Who is going to be able to use cloning? If widespread, it will become another tool for control in hands of the rich and powerful.

• On surface level, cloning has many benefits and no actual arguments against it.
• It can help people with reproductive diseases and complications.
• The actual unethicality lies in what people would use it for, not in the practice itself.

VS

I am not sure if I would ban cloning, but I would definitely impose strict regulations and constantly revise its ethical implications

Many thanks for listening!

– How strict should we be with cloning regulations and bans?– Do we have a "right to genetic identity"? Contrary to that, do we have a "right to reproductive autonomy"?– Do you think repugnancy is a valid and convincing argument?