As science gets ever closer to producing a human clone, legislators, ethicists and scientists themselves are grappling with the question of where and how to draw the line. It would be nice to imagine that merely by passing a law, the whole thing will go away. However, the history of its human society shows that if the technology is there, it is likely top be used. We may as well prepare ourselves for the fact of the production of a cloned human being.
When it happens, the created human being will have to be acknowledged either as a human being or just a mass of cells. The choice will be a fairly clear. Once the creature displays the usual attributes of being human there will be no choice. The created being we will inevitably be granted the full rights of all other human beings. After all, whatever its genetic make-up it will have to be born and will be demonstrably human
It would be as well to try to limit and the number of people created this way, but prohibition can only be partially successful. Thirty years ago society was presented with what was then the ghastly prospect of test-tube babies. These babies were created by fertilisation outside the human body – – something hitherto regarded as an anathema from science fiction. But now these so-called test-tube babies have grown to adulthood and some have children of their own. They are loved by their “parents”, their children, other relatives and friends just like anyone else, and receive the same protection of law as anyone else.
True, the test-tube babies had of the advantage of at least having a biological father and mother and a mixed the set of genes, whereas cloned babies would have genes from only the single parent from whom the genetic material was taken. That presents difficult legal and ethical problems which would be preferable not to face. But history tells us that face them we must.
So legislators should go in with eyes wide open to that possibility and its consequences. When one sees that even the worse-case consequences will not be the creation of some grotesque half-humans, stem cell research can be put into perspective. It would be immoral to turn away from the great scientific possibilities that would advance medicine in a way that would alleviate a great deal of human suffering from diseases like diabetes, Parkinson’s disease and other ailments. The research does not involve the creation of embryos in the ordinary sense – just clusters of cells used to grow transplantable material that will not be rejected by the host. To deny relief to those people suffering those diseases on the ground that some cells divided in a laboratory are somehow human with a “”right” to be nurtured to full being is to stretch the definition of “”human” to bizarre lengths.
The legislative test will have to be the purpose of the research andits application. If it is to create clusters of cells to treat human disease then it should be allowed. If someone goes outside the law and implants the cloned embryo bringing ti to birth, that may well test people’s definition and belief of what is “”human”.
The real ethical test, though, is whether we are immoral enough to allow dogmatic belief about clusters of cells being the equivalent of human life to prohibit medical research and procedures that will alleviate a large amount of suffering among people who are unquestionably human.