Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
protected, preserved, valued, or enhanced.
7
For the philosopher Aristo-
tle and the theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas, for instance, human nature
denotes not just what in fact humans are or do but an ideal or norma-
tive conception of what constitutes human flourishing. Just as the fact
that something occurs “in nature” or in practice does not make it morally
commendable, so changing human capacities or behavior is not in and
of itself either right or wrong. While concerns can be expressed over the
bad consequences that might follow from the disruption of known pat-
terns of family relationships that cloning would cause, it is another and
more difficult task to argue that such disruptions should necessarily
forbid the practice, much less that they make each and every instance of
cloning immoral.
I believe that cloning is more amenable to moral analysis when placed
in its social context. First, cloning furthers a cultural tendency to view
biomedical technology in a simplistic, triumphalist, and uncritical way,
placing in it hope for the alleviation of too many human ills—both social
and spiritual—that require instead ethical and religious resources.
Second, it represents the use of biomedical knowledge in combination
with technological expertise, to make profits with too little considera-
tion of the common good and the restraint it requires. Third, it over-
looks or represses the gap between rich and poor that throughout
the world allows the lucky few access to exotic techniques while depriv-
ing many more of basic health care and other necessities. Characteriza-
tions like “manufacture” and “produce” have a good deal more force
when applied to cloning as a part of a highly remunerative, widely adver-
tised, and increasingly mass-market infertility industry. Individual
parents or couples would be appalled to think that they are obtaining
manufactured children from a production line, but this does not keep
them from being the desperate, naive, or just opportunistic consumers
who will ensure that expanding infertility and cloning programs turn a
profit by satisfying customers. On such grounds alone, regardless of
whether or not cloning is intrinsically evil in itself, cloning should be
regulated or even banned. Commercialized, technology-driven repro-
duction affects the social institutions of family and parenthood in
deleterious ways because it makes basic, intimate human relations and
communities increasingly subject to individualism, commodification,
and exploitation.
