What's New in Life Science Research

Reproductive cloning captures the imagination. Rather than going through the whole genetic roulette inherent in ovum-sperm speed dating, why not opt for an offspring who is a known quantity -- as close to a chip off the old block (whether that block be Mom, Dad, a sibling, or a celebrity donor like Stephen Colbert) as you're likely to get?

There are some reasons people might be fearful of reproductive cloning that are not well grounded on facts. But I think there are other reasons why we ought to be extremely cautious about widespread use of reproductive cloning.

First, the objections I think are not well grounded.

Because a clone is made from someone else's DNA, it won't have its own identity.

Our DNA has an awful lot to do with the people we are (since as people, we are also human organisms), but identical DNA does not make for human beings identical in all their particulars.

Just ask my nieces, identical twins who have quite distinct personalities. Indeed, my nieces are likely more similar to each other, biologically speaking, than a DNA donor and a clone would be: they gestated in the same womb at the same time. (On top of that, growing up in the same household, going to the same school, etc., my nieces share a great deal in terms of their environment -- and environment has a lot to do with how our genes are actually expressed.)

Given that we don't view identical twins as a risk to personhood or individuality, we shouldn't think that the very fact of having a DNA-twin out there in the world is a problem for the personhood or individuality of a clone.

It's wrong for parents to try to make a child in their own image.

Something about electing to have a child who is a carbon copy of one's self can seem creepy and narcissistic.

But guess what: there are parents making babies the old fashioned way who want to see themselves reproduced in their offspring. These parents may be counting on their totally awesome genes to be dominant. Whether they are or not, these parents may also do what they can to create an environment where junior can grow up to be a violin virtuoso or a soccer star just like Dad or Mom.

The very fact that it matters enough to couples struggling with infertility to have their "own" children (indeed, that it matters enough that they will endure lengthy, expensive, and physically difficult fertility treatments) indicates that seeing one's genes carried on is not a completely bizarre thing to value. If we were really committed to the idea that it was wrong to make children in our own image, we would have instituted a system under which kids were raised by adults who were not their genetic relatives.

Because they're made in the lab, clones won't have souls.

Tell it to all the kids born as a result of IVF. They seem to be doing as well as anyone else.

Even though I don't think these worries are actually much to worry about, I would be nervous about widespread use of safe and effective reproductive cloning of humans. I'd be concerned about the effect it might have on our gene pool, largely because I'm not convinced that decisions that seem rational at the individual level will aggregate to results that are good for the population.

In the extreme, if parents were choosing the DNA of their offspring in an effort to produce a child with "the best" available genetic endowment, widely shared views of what "the best" looks like could result in a lot of clones from the same source material. When I was in grade school, there were four Jennifers in my class. In a grade school of the future, we might encounter four Jennifer Aniston clones in a class (and six Angelinas, and a bunch of Brads). And in the short term, if the main selection pressures you kid needs to withstand revolve around looking like a star and displaying some talent for acting, maybe that's OK. But there may be a lot of valuable genetic material hiding in the folks who don't look like they belong on the cover of US Weekly that may drop out of the pool.

At some point, especially if our environment changes in some subtle but significant way, we may need those genes. If they drop out of the pool, we may be in trouble.

This is a tough thing for us to wrap our minds around, as attached as we are both to our right to make all kinds of choices for ourselves and our commitment to make life as good for our kids as we can. Our individual choices -- choices that seem like the best choices when taken on their own -- can add up to bad outcomes. We can see something like evidence for this by looking at the gender imbalance in China that seems to have resulted from the One-Child policy in a society where boy-children are valued more than girl-children. Given the choice to carry only one child to term, it might seem perfectly rational to choose a boy -- choosing a girl would be choosing a child who would have a harder time of it in the world you were bringing her into.

But if too many individual parents make this same rational calculation, twenty years down the road, all those sons are going to have a heck of a time finding wives.

It's hard to predict exactly what kind of chickens might come home to roost if reproductive cloning became a common means of human reproduction. But I'm betting their talons could do some damage. Just in case the technologies for reproductive technology get a whole lot better, I think we need to make sure that we think about what we should be doing to maintain a healthy diversity in our shared gene pool.

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*Undoubtedly, this line of reasoning raises the question of whether it is ethical to carry to term any child with a condition that could make his or her life painful and short. Since scientists aren't directly involved in most of these pregnancies, they get to sidestep the question.