How will advances in human cloning technology impact the hyperconnected society and 3D printing?

The introduction of biometric unmanned convenience stores in 2017 has reignited the debate on human cloning. The advancement of the hyper-connected society and 3D printing technology has intensified the ethical issues of human cloning and requires social and ethical consideration.

 

On May 16, 2017, an unmanned, state-of-the-art smart convenience store with biometric technology opened for the first time in Korea on the 31st floor of Lotte World Tower in Jamsil, Seoul. The centerpiece of the technology is the HandPay system. It is a type of BioPay that enables payment with specific parts of the human body, and it is a technology that uses the shape and clarity patterns of veins that differ from person to person to distinguish people, making it possible to verify identity and pay for goods using only palm authentication. These biometric technologies are attracting attention as they can smartly optimize the shopping experience for consumers and enhance security and reliability. However, in a society where these technologies have been implemented, what would happen if there was a person with the same genes as you, who was identical to you not only in appearance but also in veins? As time has passed and science and technology have advanced, it has become possible to ask such questions, and the debate on human cloning has entered a new phase. Let’s start with some historical context.
On February 24, 1997, news broke that Ian Wilmert and his fellow scientists had created a cloned sheep, Dolly. Five months after Dolly’s existence was revealed to the world, Wilmert’s team succeeded in inserting human genes into sheep cells, leading to the development of methods to manipulate the genes and cells of all mammals, including humans. As these rapid advances in biotechnology continued, scientific theories, possibilities, and debates about human cloning began to emerge. As a world of cloned humans approached and became a reality in the not-too-distant future, various biotechnological and medical benefits were raised. However, many scientists, theologians, and even ordinary citizens have been overwhelmed by the ethical embarrassment and disgust of human cloning, and public opinion has begun to form that human cloning should be prevented. As a result, countries around the world, out of respect for bioethics, banned human cloning and research on human beings through various treaties and laws before the year 2000. Fast forward to 2017, and we are now in the midst of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, with rapid advances in science, technology, and industry. As I read books on human cloning, I found that focusing on the evolution of human science, philosophy, and ethics in this era sheds new light on the debate about human cloning. In this new light, I believe that human cloning is more likely to pose greater risks, and that we need to critically examine the technology on a personal, societal, and national level. In this article, I examine human cloning in light of two of the most prominent topics of the Fourth Industrial Revolution: the hyperconnected society and 3D printing technology. Let’s take a look at how the debate has deepened compared to the classical discussions, what new light we need to shed on it, and the problems with human cloning.
First, let’s look at human cloning in a hyper-connected society. The hyper-connected society refers to a future in which highly advanced IT and smart technologies will provide a new paradigm in which humans, objects, and data are interconnected to form a single, intelligent network. After the digital revolution, when the invention of the telephone and the Internet made it possible to communicate with people far away, the recent development of the Internet of Things (IoT) has begun to connect things with things and people with people, and a deeply connected society is emerging in which not only digital devices but also analog devices and even organisms such as humans interact with each other by finding meaning between previously disconnected information. Biometric technology, which I mentioned in the first paragraph, is one of the systems that make up this society. As machines begin to distinguish people from the way we pay for things with cash or cards, machines and people are becoming one, maximizing convenience. Currently, this is achieved by recognizing some tissues or organs of the human body, such as irises, fingerprints, or veins, but as the technology develops, it is speculated that we will eventually reach a stage where people will be identified by genetic information such as DNA, as depicted in futuristic science fiction movies such as GATTACA: a society where each person is defined by their genes, and their genes are the medium of connection to objects, data, and other people. In such an era, cloning humans is fraught with great risks and problems. The moment a human being with the same genes as you is born, you are no longer defined as an independent object and your unique meaning is fragmented. This potential loss of uniqueness has been debated since the classic debate on human cloning. If we look at the report of the National Bioethics Advisory Committee (NBAC) in the United States, which investigated the ethical issues of human cloning and submitted a report to the government, we can categorize the classic opposition to human cloning at the time, and there is a section on “cloning and individuality”. Here, we can see that many people of the time were worried that human cloning would compromise their individuality and identity. The fear of cloning humans was formed because we intuitively expect that the same person would have the same body, as the mind and body merge to form an identity. In addition to these fears, there is a strong argument that human cloning violates the right to a unique unrepeated genome, and is likely to violate the right to an open future for cloned humans. Bringing the agenda of cloning humans, which has led to so much opposition simply because they look the same, into the modern world, where genes are what make us who we are, further complicates matters. Of course, one could argue that cloned humans are not 100% identical to the original. Differences in their development, their experiences during birth and growth, and their environment will lead to physical and mental differences from the original. However, the fact remains that the genes and various physical and mental structures will be very similar to the original. Therefore, in a society where the genetic information of all citizens is nationally registered, and the information is used to communicate, secure, and maintain various data and objects, cloned humans will be the perfect variable to cause social disruption. Recently, a drama about a cloned human committing a serial killing spree was aired, and social concerns about this are intensifying even now.
Second, let’s take a look at the discussion of human cloning that 3D printers have intensified. A 3D printer is a printer that prints a three-dimensional printout in three-dimensional space, as opposed to traditional printers that use ink or laser to print on paper. It is a revolution in manufacturing that will allow individuals to print and use their own objects instead of mass-producing them in factories. In the last four to five years, it has been spreading in earnest, and related education and platforms are being actively created beyond Korea. There are various forms that can be printed using 3D printers. As the materials used for printing are diversifying, we are approaching a society where we can transform and print objects around us at will, from ordinary plastic objects to metal, furniture, food, and chocolate. This is where we should pay attention to ‘Bio – 3D Printing’. It is a convergence of bio-nanotechnology and 3D printing technology that prints ‘bio ink’ such as stem cells in a layer-by-layer format to match human tissue and grows tissue through the incubation stage. We are on the verge of an amazing society where we can freely print various tissues and organs in the body, such as blood vessels, eyeballs, liver, heart, etc. In fact, a company called Levotek in Sichuan, China, has successfully printed blood vessels using stem cells from monkeys and transplanted them back into monkeys, showing the promise of this technology. Currently, the technology is used to print tissues and organs for medical applications such as organ transplantation, but the technology is so advanced that the idea of 3D printing a human being itself has been advanced to the point of cloning and printing a human body. This is a completely new paradigm for human cloning. Until now, cloning a human being did not mean creating an exact copy of a human being. The nucleus containing the genetic information is extracted from the human body cell and implanted into an egg from which the nucleus has been removed through nuclear transfer technology, which is then stimulated to divide. Then, the egg is implanted in the surrogate mother’s uterus to give birth to a child with the same genes as the human, which is what human cloning technology means. However, human cloning using bio 3D printing is like creating a clone in a science fiction movie: it can produce a new individual with the same genes and the same morphology as the human. While this is still technologically far in the future, the fact remains that it will require a complete rethinking of the human cloning debate. For one thing, the issues of egg donation and surrogacy, which have been raised as part of the ethical concerns, would disappear altogether. In the original classical debate, the potential for physical harm from human cloning was the primary argument against it. In fact, Dolly the cloned sheep was the result of 277 trials and errors. Although the technology has become more sophisticated since then, there was still the risk of miscarriage for the mother and the risk of developmental disabilities for the child. However, the possibility of such physical harm will be drastically reduced within the new concept of printing and cloning an identical human being in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. However, the issues of individuality and identity that I mentioned above will be extremely intensified. The idea that a human being with the same genes as you could be cloned and born as a child, which has been the subject of much debate, would be shocking and repulsive to many people, as would the idea that a human being with the same form as you could be produced, and that not just one but many individuals could be produced like a factory.
So far, we have looked at human cloning in the light of the hyper-connected society and 3D printing technology, which is a major topic of discussion in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and what new or deeper issues have been raised compared to the classic debates. Arthur Eddington, the brilliant British physicist who pioneered astrophysics, once said “Science and wisdom are not the same thing. Science is a sharpened instrument, which a child may play with and cut his own fingers.” Advances in science and technology have brought countless benefits to mankind and have undoubtedly contributed to the creation of a glorious civilization. However, it also comes with responsibilities and risks that must always be kept in check. The same goes for the discussion of human cloning. As we face many new technologies in the new industrial revolution, we need to set the right standards and continue to conduct research in the right way. Especially since this issue is closely related to humanity’s identity and existence, it requires a more cautious and critical eye.