Second, a clone is so named because the cloned entity is virtually
identical, genetically, to the provider of the genetic material used to
replace the nucleus of the egg. (I say "virtually" because a minute amount
of genetic material from the egg becomes part of the genetic makeup of the
new cloned entity.)
Third, while it's true that replacing the egg nucleus with the DNA of the
cloned person is the primary technique used to clone in the laboratory,
this genetic transfer is not all that happens. As stated earlier, the
cloner must next stimulate the genetically modified egg to grow in the
same fashion as it would had it been fertilized. Thus, just as Dolly the
cloned sheep is not its mother, so a cloned human embryo is not merely a
somatic cell line derived from the person who was cloned; it is a separate
and distinct living entity.
Finally, the "new cell" does not "copy itself again and again" until, as
if by magic, it suddenly becomes various body tissues. Rather, if the
cloned embryo survived long enough he or she would go through exactly the
same stages of development as any other baby -- from an embryo, to a
fetus, to birth. Indeed, as the clone embryo nears two weeks' development,
its makeup has changed dramatically from what existed at the single-cell
stage. Like its naturally created counterpart, he or she would now be made
up primarily of undifferentiated stem cells, which would, given the time
to develop, become all of the tissues of the body -- such as, for
instance, the liver tissue referenced by Russell. It is these stem cells
that are the current targets of the biotech industry.
"If it has the ability to twin, it isn't human." Some cloning supporters
claim that an embryo isn't really human life until it can no longer become
an identical twin. The idea seems to be that until the time in embryonic
development when identical twinning cannot occur, the embryo isn't really
a human individual. Since human research clones would be destroyed prior
to that time, destroying the clone would not actually take a human life.
The argument is ridiculous. Naturally occurring identical twins originate
from the same fertilized egg. (Fraternal twins develop from different
fertilized eggs.) Twinning occurs early in gestation when the single
embryo splits into two identical embryos -- a natural form of cloning.
These identical embryos are now siblings.
Before twinning, an embryo -- whether naturally conceived or cloned -- is
an individual, self-contained embryonic human life with a gender and an
individual genetic makeup. After identical twinning, there are now two
individual, self-contained human lives, each having an identical gender
and genetic makeup. In other words, there are now two human lives instead
of one. However, even though they appear to be identical genetically, each
life is unique. (For example, should the twins ever be born, each would
have different fingerprints.)
Advocates of the Brave New World Order know that, in the cloning debate,
we confront the most fundamental issue possible: Does individual human
life have inherent value simply and merely because it is human? They also
know that if the answer is yes, we will ban human cloning as an immoral
and unethical objectification of human life.
(This would not mean abandoning medical research into the potential of
human cellular therapies. To the contrary, by dropping our pursuit of
cloning and ESCR, all our resources and energies could be aggressively
applied to pursuing adult/alternative stem-cell therapies that offer the
potential benefits of ESCR -- without degrading the value of some human
life to that of cattle herds or timber forests.)
But if Big Biotech and its apologists are able to convince the public that
the answer is no -- if they succeed in excluding embryos from our common
humanity in order to justify harvesting their parts -- the value of human
life itself will be transformed from an objective good into a matter of
mere opinion. That, in turn, would lead us to create subjective criteria
by which to judge which humans have lives that are sacrosanct, and which
do not.
And, it turns out, this is exactly what the modern bioethics movement is
already doing. According to "personhood theory," being a part of the human
community is not what matters. What counts is being part of the "moral
community." Those who belong are "persons," a status gained -- whether by
a human or an animal -- by possessing certain cognitive abilities, such as
being self-aware over time. Those who do not belong are "non persons,"
humans (and other life forms) that have insufficient ability to reason,
and that therefore have lives of significantly less moral concern.
The humans generally cast into the outer darkness of non-personhood
include all unborn life (whether created by cloning or by fertilization);
newborn infants; people with advanced dementia; and those in persistent
coma, or who have other significant cognitive disabilities. Not only do
these humans not possess the right to life, they may not have the right to
bodily integrity. Indeed, it has been argued in the world's most respected
medical and bioethics journals that the body parts of non persons --
whether organs, corneas, or embryonic stem cells -- should be available to
harvest for the benefit of persons. In this sense, the debate over cloning
and ESCR is merely one battlefield of a much larger war.
