Human Reproductive Cloning - Brutes or Angels: Human Possibility in the Age of Biotechnology - page 189

repugnance toward torturing helpless animals or persons, harming chil-
dren, and betraying trust appears to reflect some inherent wisdom about
morality. on the other hand, validating some persons' feelings of outrage
would mean rescinding civil liberties for some persons, outlawing certain
political parties, and censoring literature, music, and other art forms. such
actions would, of course, incite equally strong feelings of outrage from the
other direction, and chaos would result from attempts to respect every-
body's sense of disgust.
how then are we to decide when feelings of disgust reflect the viola-
tion of a moral principle? in his topic Clones, Genes, and Immortality (19 9 8),
bioethicist John harris suggests that a moral principle is recognizable by
showing that its violation harms or otherwise adversely affects persons,
causes injustice, or violates human rights. Applying this criterion to a
moral prohibition of human cloning requires one to show how cloning
would harm somebody, violate their rights, or cause injustice. Discussing
objections 4, 5, and 7 will help us determine whether human reproductive
cloning would cause any of these negative consequences.
Objection 4. every person has the right to a unique genetic constitution,
and this right would be violated by cloning.
Persons with this objection may be forgetting that identical twins share
identical genetic constitutions. few would suggest that we should prevent
the birth of identical twins in order for everybody to have a unique ge-
netic constitution. in fact, identical twins share more genes than would a
clone and the cloned person. 4 so, for both biological and logical reasons,
the claim that we all have a right to a unique genetic constitution must be
rejected.
Objection 5. every person has the right to an open future, the freedom
to make what one desires out of one's life. Clones may have this right jeop-
ardized due to others' expectations that they will lead a life similar to that
of the cloned person.