lcremonni 's List: Bioethics

• Consent from the human clone itself is of course impossible to obtain.  It may be argued, on the one hand, that no one consents to his own birth
• Giving life to an individual does not grant  one the right to harm that individual. It is true that the scientist cannot  ask an unconceived child for permission, but this puts a burden on the  scientist, not on the child.
• Each of us knows that no one has ever had our unique combination  of natural characteristics before. We know that no one knows all the potentialialities  contained within that combination. A cloned child, however, will live  out a life shaped by a genotype that has already lived.
• It may be reasonably argued that genetic individuality as such is not  an essential human good, since identi
• Moreover,  he or she was cloned from that person's DNA for a reason, and must therefore  in one way or another deal with his or her connection to that person and  that reason.
• At the same time that our procreative origins endow us with individuality  and freedom, our natural connection to our family of origin also binds  us to the human world in ways that matter deeply. Personal and social  identity and social links of responsibility are connected in countless  ways to ties of biological kinship.
• The clone's place in the scheme of human relations will be uncertain and  confused. The usual clear designations of father and mother, sister and  brother, would be confounded.

  • human relations are confused
• for some particular reason with some particular design  in mind. This is far from the way children generally (and naturally) relate  to their family of origin, and the differences may tend to run against  the grain of the social institutions that surround the family.
• while  cloning actually runs against the grain of that model. Adopted children,  like biological children, are welcomed as they are (sometimes more so  than biological children), frequently before their adoptive parents know  much about what they are and may become. They were not conceived with  some specific predetermined end in mind, and indeed they were not conceived  to be adopted (nearly no one deliberately produces children for the purpose  of adoption.)

  • not like adopted children because wanted for a specific reason. not a surprise
• he confusion created by the complicated relationship of  cloner to cloned may mean that no clear lines of parent-child, sibling-sibling,  or other familial kin relations will develop.

  • cloner and cloned relatiohsip is confused
• so the model of the  natural family would be very difficult if not impossible to emulate.

  • can't copy the model of a natural family
• The family,  of course, is at once a social and a natural institution, and the two  elements reinforce each other in countless subtle ways. Breaking some  of the links between them could leave the institution of the family without  a firm grounding in nature and without strong social support.

  • breaking family links
• In cloning  a child, on the other hand, parents seek to exercise total control over  the outcome of the reproductive process itself. This does not mean that  they completely shape their child before it is born: After all, there  is more to each of us than our genome and our environment. But it does  mean that they control and -- even if they do not -- that they will be  held responsible for those things that parents have until now been forced  to leave to chance, and that they therefore do not acknowledge, with humility,  the limits of their powers, but rather they approach procreation as an  exercise of their power and will.

  • parents know what the child will be like if it is cloned. They wouldn't acknowledge the limits of their powers becuase the child is exactly what they would want...?
• determine in advance what  sort of child they will accept.
• The distance between the procreative  nature of humanity and the social status of the family could grow, and  both may become less thoroughly grounded in one another. That grounding,  as has been discussed, is vital for both, and its diminution could bring  with it profound problems. Family relations, and social relations in general,  are founded at the deepest level on mankind's procreative nature, and  on our character as begotten and begetting creatures.

  • family roots would be confused, which would then complicate social relations
• Human institutions, and particularly those (like the family) that transcend  specific times and places, are storehouses of human wisdom.

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