Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
child or other relative, couples seeking to avoid the manifestation of
genetic disease in their child, and parents seeking a tissue match for an
existing child. Reproductive technologies constitute a largely unregulated
industry both in the United States and internationally. Human repro-
ductive cloning is banned in most of Europe, but in many other coun-
tries, including China, India, Pakistan, and South Korea, it is not
prohibited.
A recent cover story in the
New York Times Magazine
described the
“delirious scientism” of an eccentric Canadian sect called the Raelians,
whose founder claims to have visited with aliens in a flying saucer in
1973, and who are also deep into the cloning quest. Their company,
Clonaid, hopes to normalize reproductive cloning to the extent that pro-
creating through sex will be regarded as just too risky for the prospec-
tive child.
4
While cloning entrepreneurs may offer alleviation of the woes
of barren or bereaved couples as their motivation, there is also big money
to be made in cloning. This is not a technique that researchers are pro-
posing to offer free of cost to all, but one that could draw on a wealthy
market and investors, not only on this continent, but especially in cul-
tures where the scions of a fabulously wealthy upper class are expected
to produce heirs, and where neither adoption nor pollution of the family
bloodlines by donor gametes are regarded receptively. Even now, a
cloning research project at Texas A&M is going forward under a mul-
timillion dollar grant bestowed by a pet owner who hopes to eventually
acquire an extra copy of his beloved dog. Each step in mammalian
cloning research brings closer the day when human cloning will be
feasible.
5
What exactly is it that is objectionable about human cloning? This
may be harder to pin down than it would at first seem. Few people still
believe that cloning could actually produce exact replicas of parent
human beings, much less whole classes or armies of identical persons.
The interaction of genetics and environment is too strong for that. Many
react to what seems the coldly technocratic approach to bearing children
by terming cloning a sort of “manufacture” or “production” of a child.
For instance, a statement released by the U.S. National Conference of
Catholic Bishops' Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities calls for a stronger,
comprehensive ban on reproductive cloning, and asserts that cloning
dehumanizes and objectifies a child: “In human cloning, a new human
