Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History

by Unknown

  One field that troubles most scientists is the cloning of human beings—to produce a genetically identical duplicate. On May 17, 2001, at a meeting about the legal, social, and ethical implications of human genetics at the University of Chicago, Dr. Kass took on this subject.

  The address presented the problem with a stark medical metaphor: “Human nature itself lies on the operating table….” In a staccato paragraph using sentence fragments, Kass lists some the “transforming powers” already upon us. This leads to his evocation of the 1932 novel by Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (the title from Shakespeare’s The Tempest: “O brave new world, that has such people in’t!”). More directly than 1984, the 1949 work of fiction by George Orwell, Huxley’s sociopolitical novel deals with the dehumanizing danger of the chemical and biological manipulation of the human species.

  In sounding the tocsin about this threat of a “posthuman world,” Kass disarms his audience with lines like “I exaggerate somewhat, but in the direction of the truth” and “This afternoon I want to begin to persuade you….” Self-questioning keeps the flow going: “What to think about this prospect? Nothing good.” He then lists four objections to human cloning and examines them seriatim, a device that helps the listener follow his points (Four is about the limit—ten points is a nice round number for religious commandments and bills of rights, but in rhetorical arguments, more than four signals to the audience an interminable speech ahead.) By concluding with a specific legislative remedy and a call for “shifting the paradigm around,” the ethicist places the burden of justifying exciting scientific gains on those unwilling to recognize the danger of a loss in being human.

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  THE URGENCY OF the great political struggles of the twentieth century, successfully waged against totalitarianisms first right and then left, seems to have blinded many people to a deeper truth about the present age: All contemporary societies are traveling briskly in the same utopian direction. All march eagerly to the drums of technological progress and fly proudly the banner of modern science; all sing loudly the Baconian anthem, “Conquer nature, relieve man’s estate.” Leading the triumphal procession is modern medicine, becoming daily ever more powerful in its battle against disease, decay, and death, thanks especially to the astonishing achievements in biomedical science and technology—achievements for which we must surely be grateful.

  Yet contemplating present and projected advances in genetic and reproductive technologies, in neuroscience and psychopharmacology, and in the development of artificial organs and computer-chip implants for human brains, we now clearly recognize new uses for biotechnical power that soar beyond the traditional medical goals of healing disease and relieving suffering. Human nature itself lies on the operating table, ready for alteration, eugenic and psychic “enhancement,” and wholesale redesign.

  Some transforming powers are already here. The pill. In vitro fertilization. Bottled embryos. Surrogate wombs. Cloning. Genetic screening. Genetic manipulation. Organ harvests. Mechanical spare parts. Chimeras. Brain implants. Ritalin for the young, Viagra for the old, and Prozac for everyone.

  Years ago Aldous Huxley saw it coming. In his charming but disturbing novel, Brave New World, he made its meaning strikingly visible for all to see. Huxley paints human life seven centuries hence, living under the gentle hand of a humanitarianism that has been rendered fully competent by genetic manipulation, psychopharmacology, hypnopaedia, and high-tech amusements. At long last, mankind has succeeded in eliminating disease, aggression, war, anxiety, suffering, guilt, envy, and grief. But this victory comes at the heavy price of homogenization, mediocrity, pacification, trivial pursuits, shallow attachments, debasement of tastes, spurious contentment, and souls without loves or longings. The Brave New World has achieved health, prosperity, community, stability, and nigh-universal contentment, only to be peopled by creatures of human shape but of stunted humanity. They consume, fornicate, take “soma,” enjoy “centrifugal bumble-puppy,” and operate the machinery that makes it all possible. They do not read, write, think, love, or govern themselves. Art and science, virtue and religion, family and friendship are all passe. What matters most is bodily health and immediate gratification. Babies and blessings both come out of bottles. Brave new man is so dehumanized that he does not even recognize what has been lost.

  Huxley’s novel is, of course, science fiction. Prozac is not yet Huxley’s soma; cloning by nuclear transfer or splitting embryos is not exactly bokanovskification; MTV and virtual-reality parlors are not quite the “feelies”; and our current safe-and-consequenceless sexual practices are not universally as loveless or as empty as in the novel. But the kinships are disquieting. Indeed, the cultural changes technology has already wrought among us should make us even more worried than Huxley would have us be.

  In Huxley’s novel, everything proceeds under the direction of an omnipotent—albeit benevolent—world state. But the dehumanization he portrays does not really require despotism. To the contrary, precisely because the society of the future will deliver exactly what we most want—health, safety, comfort, plenty, pleasure, peace of mind, and length of days—mankind can reach the same humanly debased condition solely on the basis of free human choice. No need for World Controllers. Just give us the technological imperative, liberal democratic society, compassionate humanitarianism, moral pluralism, and free markets, and we can take ourselves to Brave New World all by ourselves—and, what is most distressing, without even deliberately deciding to go. In case you hadn’t noticed, the train has left the station and is gathering speed, but no one seems to be in charge.

  Not the least of our difficulties in trying to exercise control over where biology is taking us is the fact that we do not get to decide, once and for all, for or against the destination of a posthuman world. The scientific discoveries and technical powers that will take us there come to us piecemeal, one at a time and seemingly independent from one another, each often attractively introduced as a measure that will “help us not to be sick.” But sometimes we come to a clear fork in the road where decision is possible and where we know that the decision we make will make a world of difference, indeed, will make a permanently different world.

  We stand now at the point of such a momentous decision. Events have conspired to provide us with a perfect opportunity to seize the initiative and to gain some control of the biotechnical project. I refer to the prospect of human cloning, a practice absolutely central to Huxley’s fictional world. Indeed, creating and manipulating life in the laboratory is the gateway to the Brave New World, not only in fiction but also in fact.

  “To clone or not to clone a human being” is no longer a fanciful question. Success in cloning first sheep, then also cows, mice, pigs, and goats, make it perfectly clear that a fateful decision is now at hand: whether we should welcome or even tolerate the cloning of human beings.

  Human cloning, though partly continuous with previous reproductive technologies, is also something radically new, both in itself and in its easily foreseeable consequences—especially when coupled to powers for genetic “enhancement” and germ-line genetic modification visible on the horizon. I exaggerate somewhat, but in the direction of the truth: we are compelled to decide nothing less than whether human procreation is going to remain human, whether children are going to be made-to-order rather than begotten, and whether we wish to say yes in principle to the road that leads to the dehumanized hell of Brave New World.

  This afternoon I want to begin to persuade you, first, that cloning is a serious evil, both in itself and in what it leads to; and second, that we ought to try to stop it by legislative prohibition. My motives are twofold. First, I am quite serious about trying to do something to prevent human cloning itself. Second, I care about getting our hands on the wheel of the runaway train now headed for a posthuman world, and I doubt that we will ever get a better chance.

  What is cloning? Cloning, or asexual reproduction, is the production of individuals who are genetically identical to an a
lready existing individual. Here’s how it’s done: Take a mature but unfertilized egg; remove its nucleus; replace it with a nucleus obtained from a specialized cell of an adult organism; after a few cell divisions, transfer the cloned embryo to a prepared uterus for pregnancy and delivery. Since almost all the hereditary material of a cell is contained within its nucleus, the renucleated egg and the individual into which it develops are genetically identical to the organism that was the source of the transferred nucleus. An unlimited number of genetically identical individuals—a clone—could be produced by nuclear transfer. Any person, male or female, newborn or adult, could be cloned, and in any quantity. Because stored cells can outlive their sources, one may even clone the dead.

  Some possible misconceptions need to be avoided. First, cloning is not xeroxing: the clone of Bill Clinton, though his genetic double, would enter the world hairless, toothless, and peeing in his diapers, like any other human infant. But neither is cloning just like natural twinning: the cloned twin will be identical to an older, existing adult; it will arise not by chance but by deliberate design; and the entire genetic makeup will be preselected by the parents and/or scientists. Further, the success rate, at least at first, will probably not be very high. For this reason among others, it is unlikely that, at least for now, the practice would be very popular, and there is no immediate worry of mass-scale production of multicopies. Still, for the tens of thousands of people who sustain over three hundred assisted-reproduction clinics in the United States and already avail themselves of in vitro fertilization and other techniques, cloning would be an option with virtually no added fuss. Should commercial interests develop in “nucleus banking,” as they have in sperm banking and egg harvesting; should famous athletes or other celebrities decide to market their DNA the way they now market their autographs and nearly everything else; should techniques of embryo and germ-line genetic testing and manipulation arrive as anticipated, increasing the use of laboratory assistance in order to obtain “better” babies—then cloning, if permitted, could become more than a marginal practice simply on the basis of free reproductive choice.

  What to think about this prospect? Nothing good. Indeed, most people are repelled by nearly all aspects of human cloning: the possibility of mass production of human beings, with large clones of look-alikes, compromised in their individuality; the idea of father-son or mother-daughter twins; the bizarre prospect of a woman bearing and rearing a genetic copy of herself, her spouse, or even her deceased father or mother; the grotesqueness of conceiving a child as an exact replacement for another who has died; the utilitarian creation of embryonic duplicates of oneself, to be frozen away or created when needed to provide homologous tissues or organs for transplantation; the narcissism of those who would clone themselves and the arrogance of others who think they know who deserves to be cloned; the Frankensteinian hubris to create human life and increasingly to control its destiny; men playing at being God. Almost no one finds any of the suggested reasons for human cloning compelling; almost everyone anticipates its possible misuses and abuses. Moreover, the belief that human cloning cannot be prevented makes the prospect all the more revolting.

  Revulsion is not an argument; and some of yesterday’s repugnances are today calmly accepted—though, one must add, not always for the better. In crucial cases, however, repugnance is the emotional expression of deep wisdom, beyond reason’s power fully to articulate it. Can anyone really give an argument fully adequate to the horror which is father-daughter incest (even with consent), or having sex with animals, or mutilating a corpse, or eating human flesh, or raping or murdering another human being?

  Let me suggest that our repugnance at human cloning belongs in that category. We are repelled by the prospect of cloning human beings not because of the strangeness or novelty of the undertaking, but because we intuit and feel, immediately and without argument, the violation of things that we rightfully hold dear. We sense that cloning represents a profound defilement of our given nature as procreating beings and of the social relations built on this natural ground. In addition, we sense that cloning is a radical form of child abuse. In this age in which everything is held to be permissible so long as it is freely done, repugnance may be the only voice left that speaks up to defend the central core of our humanity. Shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to shudder.

  Yet repugnance need not stand naked before the bar of reason. The wisdom of our horror at human cloning can be partially articulated. I offer four objections to human cloning: (1) it involves unethical experimentation; (2) it threatens identity and individuality; (3) it turns procreation into manufacture; and (4) it means despotism over children and perversion of parenthood.

  First, any attempt to clone a human being would constitute an unethical experiment upon the resulting child-to-be. In all the animal experiments, fewer than 2–3 percent of cloning attempts succeed. Not only are there fetal deaths and stillborn infants, but there is also a high incidence of late-appearing disabilities and deformities in cloned animals that attain live birth. Nearly all scientists agree that attempts to clone a human being carry grave risks of producing unhealthy and disabled children. Considered opinion (even among scientists) is virtually unanimous: attempts at human cloning are irresponsible and unethical. We cannot ethically even get to know whether or not human cloning is feasible.

  Second, cloning, if successful, would create serious issues of identity and individuality. The clone may experience concerns about his distinctive identity not only because he will be in genotype and appearance identical to another human being, but, in this case, because he may also be twin to the person who is his “father” or “mother”—if one can still call them that. What would be the psychic burdens of being the “child” or “parent” of your twin? In the mistakenly-regarded-as-innocent case of intrafamilial cloning, what will happen when the adolescent clone of Mommy becomes the spitting image of the woman Daddy once fell in love with? In case of divorce, will Mommy still love the clone of Daddy, even though she can no longer stand the sight of Daddy himself? In addition, unlike “normal” identical twins, a cloned individual will be saddled with a genotype that has already lived. He will not be fully a surprise to the world: people are likely always to compare his performances in life with that of his alter ego, especially if he is a clone of someone gifted or famous. True, his nurture and circumstance will be different; genotype is not exactly destiny. But one must also expect parental efforts to shape this new life after the original—or at least to view the child with the original version always firmly in mind. For why else did they clone from the star basketball player, mathematician, and beauty queen—or even dear old Dad—in the first place?

  Third, human cloning would represent a giant step toward turning begetting into making, procreation into manufacture (literally, something “handmade”), a process already begun with in vitro fertilization and genetic testing of embryos. With cloning, not only is the process in hand, but the total genetic blueprint of the cloned individual is selected and determined by the human artisans. To be sure, subsequent development is still according to natural processes; and the resulting children will be recognizably human. But we here would be taking a major step into making man himself simply another one of the man-made things.

  How does begetting differ from making? In natural procreation, human beings come together, complementarily male and female, to give existence to another being who is formed, exactly as we were, by what we are—living, hence perishable, hence aspiringly erotic, hence procreative human beings. But in clonal reproduction, and in the more advanced forms of manufacture to which it will lead, we give existence to a being not by what we are but by what we intend and design. As with any product of our making, no matter how excellent, the artificer stands above it, not as an equal but as a superior, transcending it by his will and creative prowess. In human cloning, scientists and prospective “parents” adopt a technocratic attitude toward human children: human children become their artifacts.
Such an arrangement is profoundly dehumanizing, no matter how good the product.

  Finally, the practice of human cloning by nuclear transfer—like other anticipated forms of genetically engineering the next generation—would enshrine and aggravate a profound and mischief-making misunderstanding of the meaning of having children and of the parent-child relationship. When a couple normally chooses to procreate, the partners are saying yes to the emergence of new life in its novelty, are saying yes not only to having a child but also to having whatever child this child turns out to be. In accepting our finitude and opening ourselves to our replacement, we tacitly confess the limits of our control. Embracing the future by procreating means precisely that we are relinquishing our grip, in the very activity of taking up our own share in what we hope will be the immortality of human life and the human species. Thus, our children are not our children: They are not our property, they are not our possessions. Neither are they supposed to live our lives for us, nor anyone else’s life but their own. Their genetic distinctiveness and independence are the natural foreshadowing of the deep truth that they have their own and never-before-enacted life to live. Though sprung from a past, they take an uncharted course into the future.

  Much mischief is already done by parents who try to live vicariously through their children. Children are sometimes compelled to fulfill the broken dreams of unhappy parents. But whereas most parents normally have hopes for their children, cloning parents will have expectations. In cloning, such overbearing parents will have taken at the start a decisive step that contradicts the entire meaning of the open and forward-looking nature of parent-child relations. The child is given a genotype that has already lived, with full expectation that this blueprint of a past life ought to be controlling of the life that is to come. A wanted child now means a child who exists precisely to fulfill parental wants. Like all the more precise eugenic manipulations that will follow in its wake, cloning is thus inherently despotic, for it seeks to make one’s children after one’s own image (or an image of one’s choosing) and their future according to one’s will….