Recently on ABC TV morning news some guys were talking about the implications of cloning. The talking head asked the scientist type what would be the worst-case scenario. The scientist type said that it would be if some narcissistic individual had copies made of himself and exercised control over them.
Whoopie, like that doesn't happen already! It's called parenthood, the only difference being that instead of the offspring having half of his genome from each of two parents he has all of it from one.
But cloning already happens spontaneously. In the case of identical twins, one literally is the clone of the other. Sometime after fertilization and usually before implantation, the developing human individual casts off a varying number of cells which, after further growth and implantation in the uterus, continue developing into another individual (or individuals) which is more or less genetically identical to its forebear. One of the twins did not develop directly as the result of a sperm/egg combination but at a later stage from the original individual. So much for those talking about soul-less automatons of human flesh stalking around as a consequence of cloning. In one case it already happens by chance in utero as opposed to under controlled conditions by design.
Anyway, the scientist type, in his pontification, seemed to believe that if one person comes from another then it is owned by the progenitor which somehow has a right to oppress it. Even parents don't have the right to do that, at least after birth, and people don't have a right to own slaves no matter where they come from.
Some have spoken as though the very purposefulness of a deliberately made human clone would somehow, in and of itself, confer upon the maker powers over it which he otherwise would not have had if the cloning had occurred ‘naturally’ or ‘accidentally’. Hmmmm, and the individual conceived accidentally as a result of multiple failed contraceptive devices is to be accorded higher status than the one whose nearly-infertile parents tried for years and spent much money in order to be able to conceive him? The accident is afforded the full panoply of human rights but the planned-for and chosen is available for body parts? As absurd as this sounds for an individual ‘naturally’ born having two parents, the situation is no different for an individual who is cloned. He still has two genetic forebears, just through the intermediary of another individual, as in the case of identical twins. The manner of his coming into existence still takes back seat to the fact of his existence. It lies in the fact of his existence, like that of anyone else, not in the manner in which he came into existence, that he is endowed with inalienable rights.
Questions such as "Just what does this mean about being human?" are irrelevant at this point since this is all still a matter of doing by technology what is already done in nature. People can start asking these questions when someone does something really spectacular like whipping up an entire individual human genome from scratch, placing it in an artificially made cell, complete with artificially-made cellular components, and then generating a person from it, growing it in an artificial womb. Of course, it would still a matter of nature, human beings, accomplishing the same end, reproduction, by different means, a form of asexual in vitro budding.
This is the central unfairness lurking at the heart of cloning...
If I clone myself I get a lazy, willful SOB who will ignore my commands...
And, being younger, be able to whip my ass in a fight...
Where do I go to get MY slave?