Posted on 04/24/2003 12:24:35 PM PDT by J. Neil Schulman
I’ve written for The Twilight Zone. Let me take you there.
It’s yearbook photo day for Springfield Junior High’s class of 2025. Jason’s been avoiding getting his picture taken. His teacher wonders why until she looks in a yearbook from a generation ago and finds a photo of a student who looks identical to Jason.
A mandatory reporter, Jason’s teacher phones authorities. They investigate, arrest Jason’s father for violation of the Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2003, and place Jason in a foster home.
This law isn’t science fiction. H.R. 534 has already been passed by the United States House of Representatives. A final vote on S. 245, the identical Senate version, is still pending.
The bills should be defeated. They haven’t been thought through.
Cloning Human Organs for Replacement
Cloning is a potential form of replacing failing human organs. Right now the only way to replace a failing kidney, liver, heart, or lung is to cannibalize the organ from another human being. In the case of an organ such as the heart, which a potential donor could not live without, this requires a newly dead human body to cannibalize.
There’s always much more need for replacement organs than there are donors. Sometimes doctors let a patient die rather than extend resuscitation efforts because they know they have a patient who needs an organ transplant. In other countries, people are murdered to cannibalize their organs and sell them to the highest bidder on the black market.
Cannibalizing organs from other people also entails the risk of rejection because of incompatibilities, not only for tissue-typing but also for gross anatomical mismatches. Cloning organs, once the science has been perfected, which requires letting the research continue to fruition, has the potential of taking a human being's own genetic material and growing perfect replacement organs which are fully compatible with their genetic makeup. It would not necessarily require any killing in order to produce such replacement organs because they might be grown right within the human body of the person who needs them.
Human cloning is potentially a far better solution to the problem of saving the lives of people dying from organ failure than engaging in latter-day human cannibalism.
Making Twin Children
A human clone -- more precisely, a baby that is the identical twin of only one parent -- will be no less a fully human individual than an identical twin brother or sister.
Having a twin child might be the only sort of healthy baby which a couple might be able to have, just as in vitro fertilization and surrogate motherhood have already given children to other couples with reproductive challenges.
Just as one example, if there is a genetically transmitted disease or defect that one spouse in a marriage carries, and the other spouse does not, a couple wishing children carrying their own natural traits currently have no options.
Growing a baby from the genes of only one parent, the defect-free one, would allow the couple to have a child of their own without going outside their marriage. The holiness of their marriage would therefore be preserved without bringing the genetic material from an outsider, possibly that of an unknown stranger, into the sanctity of their marriage, adulterating it.
Another Potential Alternative to Adoption
Currently a couple who have barriers to normal reproduction for a variety of reasons must either remain childless or graft a child from some other family into their own family and hope the transplant will work. The euphemism for this act of high charity and blind faith is "adoption."
Preserving a natural family line is not merely superstitious worship of blood. Adoption is a wonderful thing for some parents and some children, but adoption does not preserve a family’s natural traits. If a child with natural musical gifts is adopted by a family that sees no value in spending money on violin lessons for a four-year-old, we could lose the next Joshua Bell. Likewise, if a family of violin virtuosos adopts a child from a non-musical family, forcing a musical education on a child without the natural gifts to benefit from it may prove both frustrating for the parents and psychologically damaging to the child, whose true gifts may reside elsewhere, undiscovered.
Invasion of the Family by the State
It’s no business of the government to dictate to a family how to have children. Only the arrogant hubris of a dictatorial regime dares to interfere with the right of free human beings to self-determine their own reproduction. The State has no rightful business telling parents how to go about having their own babies. It is blatantly unAmerican.
The War Against Science, the War Against Conscience
Laws which cripple the ability of scientists to pursue research potentially beneficial to humanity are destructive of free inquiry, and law should apply only in those cases where one human being is violating the rights of another human being. Regardless of those who claim the mantle to know the mind of God, human cells or even organs are not human beings and do not have human rights. Kidneys do not have souls. Livers do not have souls.
It’s a theologically debatable question whether embryos have souls. Some religious traditions maintain that a soul does not even enter a human body until the baby takes its first breath. It is a form of religious coercion -- government by theocracy -- to allow one religion's or sect's article of faith to dictate matters of personal conscience to people of other beliefs. It is destructive to the fundamental values of a free society for law to replace individual conscience on matters which, for those who believe, can only be answered in prayer to the Almighty.
Left Behind
Moving beyond the theological basis for moral concerns about cloning, it is self annihilating for a society to outlaw an entire field of scientific research. A society which declares war on science is relegating itself to the dustbin of history. It is crippling its economic growth, its competitiveness, its spirit of adventure. It is cultural suicide. It is damning one's progeny. It is making the human mind a prisoner to the fears of the ignorant.
Perhaps we do not know how to clone a human being safely today. Banning cloning and cloning research guarantees that we will not know how to do so tomorrow. It is a form of antiscientific terrorism, a form of Ludditism.
It is also the Sin of Pride, because it assumes that when God gave human beings that He cloned in His image independent minds, He expected us never to attempt anything new with those independent minds.
Back Alley Clones
When clones are outlawed, only outlaws will have clones. In a back-alley abortion, there is no surviving baby who will live to wonder, like an illegal twin would have to worry, like Jason, that when their yearbook photo is compared to their parent's high-school yearbook photo, it will lead to the parent's imprisonment for a Reproduction Violation.
Will the Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2003 lead to a future where we have orphanages and foster homes filled with displaced twins treated as second-class citizens because one of their parents went overseas or to an underground clinic to obtain an illegal pregnancy?
Who Ya Gonna Call?
Isn't it strange that when it comes to trying to figure out the ethical and practical problems that exist in the future, nobody in Congress even bothers asking the people who spend more time than anyone else thinking about the future -- science fiction writers? I'm a science fiction writer. I explored the ethics of cloning technology in my novel, The Rainbow Cadenza, which was first published twenty years ago.
No Congressional representative or senator has ever asked me to give testimony before a House or Senate committee.
People with no imagination should not be in charge of putting a red light on our future. I’m not saying introducing a fundamental new way of having babies should be green-lighted. But can’t a free society agree to an amber light and proceed with caution?
In addition to having written for The Twilight Zone, J. Neil Schulman is author of the Prometheus-award-winning science-fiction novel, The Rainbow Cadenza, which explores in detail the ethics of new biotechnology such as cloning. His newest novel is the comic theological fantasy, Escape from Heaven.
Copyright © 2003 by J. Neil Schulman. All rights reserved.
"If a child with natural musical gifts is adopted by a family that sees no value in spending money on violin lessons for a four-year-old, we could lose the next Joshua Bell. Likewise, if a family of violin virtuosos adopts a child from a non-musical family, forcing a musical education on a child without the natural gifts to benefit from it may prove both frustrating for the parents and psychologically damaging to the child, whose true gifts may reside elsewhere, undiscovered.
"Funny, and I think futile, argument. In the first sentence, try substituting the words 'adopted by' with 'born to.' In the second, replace 'adopts' with 'produces,' and 'a child from a non-musical family' with 'a non-musical child.'"
Genetic traits, or clusters of them, can be dominant or recessive. If you breed racehorses, it doesn't mean every foal is a sure Triple Crown champion. But without that selective breeding, you're extremely unlikely to get one.
Traits run in families. I suggest you look up in musical catalogs the compositions from the children of J.S. Bach. Or look up the Barrymore family, or the Fondas.
If Grandpa was a virtuoso violinist, you're much likelier to get those crucial violin lessons before age five, when the muscles and bones of the fingers are most malleable and the neural pathways are most easily canalized, than if through mischance you find yourself growing up in a family of electrical engineers with no institutional memory of your violinist grandfather.
Perhaps the confusion is over when I define an individual human being as existing, and the differentiation of organ and organism. I attempted to explain that an embryo is already an individual human being, else the many tests performed prior to birth would be too generic if not done on the assumption that the organism being tested is already the oirganism to be presented at birth. The organism is being tested for anomalies. The organism that is you was already you when you implanted your life in the uterine lining of your Mother. You did that. You sent the chemical messages out that manipulated your Mother's womb environment, to accomplish your implantation. You have gone through many changes during your lifetime, but you were always you during those many changes.
Stem cells are the organs of the embryo. Toenails are tissue of the organism. A kidney is an organ within the organism. The embryo is an organism. The stem cell of an embryo is an organ of the embryonic organism.
That being my line, I already know all about the Bachs. However, I thought you'd be at least somewhat interested in hearing the personal observations of a jaded old unspectacular working stiff musician who has been around the Bach, er, Bloch, a few times, rather than pointing to a noteworthy famous example we've all heard of.
If Grandpa was a virtuoso violinist, you're much likelier to get those crucial violin lessons before age five, when the muscles and bones of the fingers are most malleable and the neural pathways are most easily canalized, than if through mischance you find yourself growing up in a family of electrical engineers with no institutional memory of your violinist grandfather.
Ditto my previous comments. I grew up around all four of my grandparents, who all told us kids about life in their respective families while growing up. As it happens, even today, my "engineer father" is still the self-appointed proud family historian, and has made it his hobby and passion to draw up detailed genealogies and histories going back at least 5 generations. If anyone would know of any "virtuoso anybody anything" in the family tree, he would. There just aren't any. Yet despite the mutation, I got to be pretty decent; good enough to make a living. ;)
Aquinas and Augustine good enough for you?
You wrote, "And it's a BIG stretch to say that God knew my soul before my soul entered my flesh."
You can find that debated in the Summa Theologica by Saint Thomas Aquinas. It's on the web at http://www.ccel.org/a/aquinas/summa/FP/FP090.html .
You continued, "Tell me, are there just billions of souls just sitting up there waiting to enter flesh? I don't think so! While my flesh was soul-less, my soul was somewhere else for God to know? He just didn't get around to putting my soul inside my body. Me thinks that argument is a bit of a stretch because you don't want to read the plain sense of the words. I don't know of any major Christian religion that teaches that my soul is waiting somewhere else before I take my first breath."
Fine, I'm a heretic. Put me on the rack, why don't you?
Well, likewise, I know something about this from personal experience, too. Check out http://www.pulpless.com/jneil/memoriam.html on my website.
You bet. But I'm not going there.
But naaaah, if there'd been the pressure of an actual virtuoso in the family, I'd probably have rebelled and ended up being something boring, like a geologist... :-/
Stem cells are the organs of the embryo. Toenails are tissue of the organism. A kidney is an organ within the organism.
Just because a thing is differentiated into various substructures and organs and parts doesn't make it an organism unto itself, and certainly doesn't make it an embryo. The front end of your large intestine is remarkably different from the back end, but that doesn't make your large intestine an organism unto itself. Every one of your cells is composed of specialized parts and structures and organelles - not one of them is capable of ever surviving on its own. The fact that parthenotes have undergone some differentiation from cells that are akin to stem cells does not make them embryos. Whether embryonic me was me all along is neither here nor there - with parthenotes, there's nobody at home, and there's never going to be anybody at home.
I was speaking of doing it with human beings. Animals are different.
Maybe I didn't make myself clear.
The "alternative techniques" you describe are on the same firm scientific footing as polywater, cold fusion, and unobtanium.
If one can grow a human ear on a mouse, then one can eventually grow a cloned organ in a wide variety of environments, including on animals, within humans, and in vitro. If you have trouble imagining this, I suggest you look up the word "serendipity."
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