Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Ian Wilmut's method, as is well known, involves the nuclear transfer
of genetic material from an adult cell to an egg taken from another adult,
which is then implanted into a third adult's uterus.
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Here, it is clear,
there is not only deliberation and planning, but the reproduction itself
is asexual, which is the very thing that worries Kass and others. To be
sure, a nonhuman uterus might conceivably be developed. It has already
been demonstrated that human genes are able to be spliced into the cells
of certain animals—though there are potentially serious problems with
this
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—to produce certain human proteins. Eventually, human tissues and
even solid organs might well be produced. Could a full human fetus be
similarly developed? It is not at all clear how or whether that question
could be answered.
One thing is clear. The human fetus within a human uterus exists
and has its being solely within a continuously developing context or
network of intimate interactions with the mother and even other indi-
viduals, although much of this is still poorly understood. In any case, it
is thanks to that developing network that what we otherwise term “fetal
development” is truly “human development” in its earliest and most
apparent form. I mean: to be human is to
become
human; and becom-
ing human requires a sequential development whose primary character-
istic is that each of its stages is or involves a complex context of
interrelationships with a highly specific other, the mother.
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Each of us
is at the outset of our lives truly
always-already-with
mother; we are
always-already-within
the literal embrace of her body, from the earliest
stirrings of semen-penetrated ovum to the full infant immediately prior
to birth.
Schutz understood with remarkable, if also undeveloped, insight that
the prime phenomenon here is receiving life, being gifted with myself by
the mother. What he did not probe were the implications of the “primal
experience”—and it is just this phenomenon that comes into question
again with the advent of human cloning. He also seemed to have under-
stood that without that ongoing biological process of pregnancy, it would
be profoundly questionable whether any “outcome” could conceivably
be “human.” If we suppose it were possible for there to be some sort of
artificial womb and placenta housed in some laboratory somewhere—a
completely novel sort of intensive care unit from the earliest moments of
impregnation on—and suppose further that an appropriately cloned or
