The Ethics of Human Cloning: A Kantian Analysis

Introduction: Objective Morality and the Cloning Debate

In her book Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong, Louis Pojman consistently makes the same point throughout her chapters: beyond all the debate and lack of consensus, and beyond all the confusion of relative morality, there should exist a true objective standard which a rational being can discover. In all her writing she seems to challenge the reader to look for objective evidence of truth — a plea which often has much in common with a more conservative position on politics and morality. When it comes to the issue of cloning, however, it seems that the search for rational, objective evidence is frequently put aside in favor of often illogical "gut reactions." It is high time that a truly reasonable approach to cloning was attempted.

In order to best approach this from an objectivist standpoint, it seems reasonable to turn to one of the founding fathers of modern objectivism, Immanuel Kant. According to Kant, there were basic objective "universal laws" which could be discovered through rational thought and what he referred to as categorical imperatives. He wrote: "Act as if the maxim of your action were to become by your will a universal law of nature." By this he meant that if one could not wish that one's actions or choices were replicated by all others in similar circumstances — or moved from the individual instance into a universal law — then one could not proceed in a moral fashion. The objective truths of the world were assumed to be logical and rationally constructed, so that if everyone were to abide by them perfectly, the world itself would be well.

If one gives credence to the voices of the religious right on the issue of cloning, one would assume that the categorical imperative was against cloning. However, on closer inspection one can find that in most foreseeable circumstances, the weight of the universal maxim may actually lie with those who support cloning. Through looking at the situation rationally and through analyzing specific arguments, one may see that despite the negative hype, cloning may in fact be a moral decision which our society and our families have a right to make.

Applying Kant's Categorical Imperative to Cloning

In regards to the Kantian analysis, it is curious to see how clearly it falls in favor of cloning. When one looks to banning cloning, one sees immediate issues with universally willing that all irreligious scientific advances — or even all those that might threaten to compromise the value of life — be forbidden. One might make such a blanket statement, but this would be somewhat inconsistent in that one would not wish away the many inventions and discoveries that throughout history have struck the world as sacrilegious or threatening to humankind. For example, the theories of the solar system and the automation of the workplace have both, in their time, been seen as compromising the value of human life and threatening the rightful place of God. While some extremists, such as the Amish, might wish for a return to a time before such science, it is not the place of most philosophers to think this way consistently. So one would have to more specifically will into existence not a ban on "bad" science, but on cloning in particular.

Yet by the same measure, one would have difficulty willing into existence a comprehensive and universal ban on the cloning of human genetic material — because this would fail to take into account the fact that cloning occurs naturally in utero, resulting in identical twins. Some cultures have in fact held that twins were a sign of evil and imposed strict bans upon them. The Ibo of Africa, before colonization, are one example of such a tradition: "twin births were abhorred, being viewed as abnormal. Hence, the babies were generally disposed of, and their mothers were, at times, banished." However, this can scarcely be considered a rational moral choice in modern times, and the fact that it existed previously in more superstitious cultures highlights the way in which its modern equivalent is similarly superstitious.

Could cloning be accommodated within the scope of a Kantian morality? The answer may be yes, depending on the reason for which the clone is made. One could in fact will that all those incapable or unwilling to give birth in other ways would reproduce themselves through cloning, and it would in no way be self-defeating. One might also feasibly will that all people reproduce themselves through cloning, and while this would be somewhat unusual it would not be inherently inconsistent and might in fact create a very strong and stable social structure. After all, these children are being treated as ends in themselves. Even for more complex purposes — such as providing bone marrow for another ill child — cloning could be universally willed. The maxim of creating one life to preserve another could be universally applied, and no harm would be done to the second child who was granted life in the bargain.

Indeed, one is hard pressed to find a significant problem with cloning in concrete moral terms. As one author writes: "What exactly is wrong with it? Which ethical principle does cloning violate? Stealing? Lying? Coveting? Murdering? What? Most of the arguments against cloning amount to little more than a reformulation of the old familiar refrain of Luddites everywhere... 'If God had meant for man to fly, he would have given us wings. And if God had meant for man to clone, he would have given us spores.' Ethical reasoning requires more than that."

So if one cannot rationally find a categorical fault in cloning, and one can find categorical faults in trying to ban cloning, then one is left with the difficult task of coming up with other arguments against the practice. In the end, it appears that cloning may not be so much condemned on a rational level as it is rejected on an emotional or even instinctual level. "Cloning is a radical challenge to the most fundamental laws of biology... much of the ethical opposition seems also to grow out of an unthinking disgust — a sort of 'yuck factor.' And that makes it hard for even trained scientists and ethicists to see the matter clearly." The idea of reproducing without sex strikes a strange chord instinctively, and the idea of some humans using cloning to produce exceptional children may seem even more threatening in a vaguely Darwinian fashion. Yet the horrors of a Brave New World scenario and massive global conformity to a superhuman standard are far from realistic. "Such ideas are repulsive, not only because of the 'yuck factor' but also because of the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis in the name of eugenics. But there's a vast difference... Banks stocked with the frozen sperm of geniuses already exist. They haven't created a master race because only a tiny number of women have wanted to impregnate themselves this way."

In the end, if one puts aside the instinctive, science-fiction-inspired fear of cloning and the unknown, there are only three basic arguments against cloning, each with its own set of sub-genres. These objections are: that cloning is inherently narcissistic without good reason; that cloning is somehow bad for society or for the clones themselves; and that cloning is inherently evil.

The Narcissism Objection: Is Cloning Pointless Vanity?

One of the most common arguments against cloning is expressed even by one of the creators of the legendary cloned sheep Dolly, who asked: "Why would we want to clone ourselves?" He went on to say that he is appalled by the very idea of human cloning because it seems so pointless to him. "Even if we truly desire an exact duplicate of someone... The plain truth is that we won't get it.... A cloned Einstein reared in twenty-first-century Los Angeles will not become a tousled professor of new physics." This argument suggests that cloning is unnecessary and will only appeal to foolish narcissists who wish to breed a perfect duplicate of themselves or an ideal child.

However, the argument that cloning is unnecessary for reproduction and useless for the purpose of duplication is not convincing, for a variety of reasons. First, it fails to recognize the full spectrum of motivation for cloning and thus fails to account for situations where it may be necessary. Likewise, it fails to recognize that psychological duplication is generally not the aim of human cloning aspirations, and that therefore many of the uses of cloning fall outside the realm of its argument. Finally, the argument — ironically — fails to appreciate the degree to which the natural genetic drives of humans may steer them toward cloning over other available solutions.

Biological Necessity and the Case for Reproductive Cloning

It is entirely natural, in both a Darwinian and an emotional human sense, for men and women to desire to give birth to a child who is biologically their kin and to devote their parental nurturing to their own biological offspring. It is the essential animal nature of humans to prefer their own biological relatives over unrelated individuals when it comes to self-sacrifice and nurturing. This is because genes that encourage preference for their own genetic contributions consistently reproduce more successfully and are passed on to the next generation. It is therefore completely natural for individuals to prefer to give birth to their own genetic offspring — to children who share parts of the same genetic code. Cloning allows one to birth and parent a child who carries one's own genetic code, thereby allowing one to fulfill one's genetic need and desire to pass along one's genes.

Idealists would of course say that such a contribution to the next generation should be made through sexual reproduction. However, in some cases this is either not feasible or not advisable. For example, consider a couple who each carried a gene for Tay-Sachs disease and yet wanted to raise a family. Their choices are limited and extremely poor. "They can reproduce naturally and risk passing on the disease to the child. They can go to a sperm bank and take a chance on unknown genes. They can try in vitro fertilization and dispose of any afflicted embryo... Or they can get a male relative of the father to donate sperm, if such a relative exists. This is one case where even people unnerved by cloning might see it as not the worst option." In the first case, they risk their child inheriting a fatal disease. In the second, the partners do not gain a child genetically related to the father (if they chose cloning they could use one male and one female clone). In the third case, they may have to agree to the destruction of afflicted embryos, which carries its own moral problems. In the last case, they risk losing some parental rights to family members. With cloning, they could gain children who were biologically related to them yet free of the disease — and those children could theoretically be healed of bad genes if the parents underwent minor gene therapy and used altered cells to create the clones.

"Cloning also brings hope to families with inherited genetic diseases by opening the way to gene therapy... age-old genetic maladies such as Tay-Sachs disease, cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, or Huntington's disease could be eliminated completely from family trees." This is a use of cloning in which not having a "duplicate" would in fact be preferable — the goal is to have children, not carbon copies. It is also an example of a case where one might consider cloning (or at least genetic alteration) necessary if the couple wished to create a child who was neither a carrier nor a victim of the disease.

Other families could also benefit from cloning when no other avenue to biological reproduction is available. For example, a man incapable of producing sperm — such as a post-prostate-cancer survivor — could not even choose in vitro fertilization, but could choose cloning if he wished to have a biological child with his partner. Likewise, a woman who could not produce egg cells could carry her own biologically related child to term. Cloning could allow women to have biological input into the future of the human race even when they chose not to submit to masculine standards of the patriarchy, and it might in fact help promote feminism and the right to biological reproductive choice. It could also allow gay and lesbian individuals to have biologically related children.

In all these cases the goal is not a narcissistic wish to reproduce the self, nor is it an unnecessary step toward reproduction. Rather, it is a reasonable — and one could argue ethical — choice to enable people to fulfill their biological destiny and pass on their genes. It must be remembered that "current infertility treatments are less than 10% successful," and that already cloning in certain species is superseding that degree of success. As one advocate explains: "Cloning yourself will not roll the clock back. It will not produce your soul mate and may not even give you your complete identical twin. What it will do is give you a baby that is more biologically related to you than anyone else. And that, says Silver, is why cloning will happen and few people will harshly judge those with infertility problems who choose it as a way to reproduce. 'It's instinctive, I think, to want to have a biological child. That's what cloning offers — a chance for some people to have what they thought they never could have: a child of their own.'"

Conclusion: Beyond Fear and Myth

In the same way, our modern fear of reproductive cloning is nothing more than foolish fear fed by Hollywood myths. There is no true reason to fear cloning other than the terror that has been bred into us through centuries of strange legends about twinning and decades of horrific science fiction about clones. The truth is that scientists are not evil, not in league with coercive state agencies, and not attempting to destroy the world through cloning. Nor are clones more likely than any other children to be malicious or threatening. In reality, there is little difference between IVF and cloning, or between cloning and normal human methods of procreation. In every case a human child is produced over approximately nine months, to live out a life full of freedom and self-determination — a life which is not, regardless of the modern myths of science, determined solely by his or her genes.

Yet while cloning is not truly a threat to society, it may well be a boon. It has the potential to improve the genetic inheritance of the next generation, to correct many serious diseases over the course of a few generations, to allow new and dynamic family structures that may strengthen our society, and to offer women greater choice in their reproductive freedoms. Once one escapes the nightmarish imagery associated with it, cloning turns out to have a benevolent and even moral appearance.