Reflections on human cloning (focusing on John Harris’ rebuttal)

In this blog post, we’ll take a look at what John Harris thinks about human cloning.

 

Ever since the birth of Dolly the cloned sheep, the debate about whether genetic cloning technology should be extended to humans has been going on for a long time. Here’s someone who has a positive view of human cloning. This is John Harris. He wrote his opinion in the book The Genetic Revolution and Bioethics. In this book, John Harris criticizes the opponents of human cloning who cite human rights and ethical issues while encouraging human cloning through the genetic revolution. I think that John Harris’s philosophical view of cloning from the perspective of freedom is acceptable to some extent, but I disagree with most of the arguments and evidence in favor of human cloning. I’d like to argue against his thinking and the problems he overlooks. I will also reconstruct the arguments of opponents of human cloning, such as Hilary Putnam, Ruth Deitch, and Alan Coleman, as well as leading experts in genetics, philosophy, law, and medicine, to show why human cloning should not be attempted.
John Harris is critical of the arguments of opponents of human cloning and the European Parliament’s resolution on cloning. The European Parliament has stated that human cloning cannot be justified under any circumstances: “Human cloning is contrary to human equality because it implicitly allows for racial selection. It also violates human dignity by requiring experimentation on humans, which can be summarized as a violation of human rights. This is largely in line with the public’s opposition to human cloning. However, John Harris criticizes that most of the arguments against human cloning lack proper arguments and reasons, and make vague references to human rights and fundamental principles, but fail to show examples of how human rights and fundamental principles are violated. In other words, it is a bunch of platitudes that seem universally true without any real examples. He argues that there are no examples of violations of principles such as respect for human dignity and ensuring the stability of genetic material as examples of human rights and fundamental principles, but I disagree. The reason John Harris claims that there have literally been no cases where respect for human dignity and the security of genetic material have been violated by human cloning is that no human cloning experiments have actually taken place yet. The reason why the proponents and opponents of human cloning have been divided into two camps since the moment Dolly the cloned sheep was successfully cloned is because we don’t know what the possibilities and success rates of human cloning are yet, and we don’t know if it’s morally right or even desirable for humanity to go ahead with it. If human cloning were to be practiced at this point, the outcome of the experiment would be the first violation of the human rights and fundamental principles that John Harris favored.
John Harris believes that most of the arguments against human cloning lack adequate reasoning and argumentation. He took the attitude that he could not understand how human rights would be violated or how it would adversely affect the perception of human dignity. John Harris believes that with sufficient biotechnological advances and a change in public perception, there is no reason why human cloning should be socially unacceptable. I don’t think we need as many arguments and reasons to create new life as he does. If there is even the slightest possibility of harm to the new life being created, that should be reason enough to oppose it. If there is also the possibility that the act of creating new life will cause additional harm to other people and create bad social trends and public opinion, that should also be reason enough to oppose it. Human cloning falls into both of these categories. A child born from human cloning is in no way safer than a child born from normal reproduction. According to Alan Coleman, in the case of Dolly the cloned sheep alone, more than 430 cell fusions were attempted and 277 reconstructed embryos were created. Only 29 of them survived to enter the mother’s womb, and only one of them gave birth. And Dolly didn’t even live as long as a normal sheep. This means that the success rate of cloning is extremely low, and in the case of human cloning, many embryos will inevitably be discarded. And we can’t ignore the physical and psychological suffering of surrogate mothers. In addition, cloned humans are more likely to develop cancer as they get older and suffer from premature aging. While we may think that human cloning is 100% safe due to sufficient animal testing, there is no way to know what the outcome will be, as there are vast differences between humans and other animals in terms of reproductive physiology and embryology. If you think about a deformed (or even normal) child born as a result of a cloning process, how difficult that child’s life would be, what kind of group they would be a part of, how their identity would be formed, and how they would worry about developing unspecified genetic diseases in the future, even a child would realize that it is universally wrong. Importantly, if this were to happen, it would sadly remain unknown to the public for several years after the clone’s birth. The public outcry would be overwhelming. Proponents may argue that new medical advances are bound to have potential risks and that no progress can be made if safety is the only concern. That’s why animal testing is undoubtedly practiced. But I think what we need to consider is the ratio of risk to public benefit. Many people say that it is not right to develop natural sciences by thinking about their means. The development of science and technology should be promoted regardless of whether it is useful or not. However, the issue of cloning humans is sensitive because lives are at stake. Imagine a successful scenario in which a cloned human being is born and lives like a normal human being without dying, and I wonder if the benefits of such a scenario, such as a cloned human being as an organ transplant provider, a cloned human being as a blood supply that is not subject to rejection, or a cloned human being to give birth to a child with the desired traits, would be important and necessary enough to risk the great risks and immorality I mentioned above.
There are also social issues. It’s too early for society to accept cloned humans as just another human being. This means that even if a clone were to be successfully created, it would be difficult to integrate it into our society. We only have to look at the current human definition of family to see this. Diversity is something we should be willing to accept and recognize. The unpredictability and excitement of not knowing which children will be born to a couple, and the diversity of those children, is an intrinsic value for human beings who have lived in family societies since ancient times, and the family that reflects that value is considered desirable. It is not difficult to imagine how a family composed of cloned human beings would be received by the public compared to the family we currently consider desirable and natural. Even if it is acceptable on the outside, people may question whether it is a true family. In some countries, public opinion has been recognized by the government and laws have been passed regarding cloning.
Some countries, such as the United Kingdom, have outlawed the use of embryos created by nuclear transfer, or even the raising of children. John Harris believes in reproductive autonomy and argues that banning reproductive cloning is a suppression of personal freedom. But here’s what I think. Is reproductive autonomy a right that can be used to justify government interference in human cloning, something that is frowned upon by the public, and that should be protected despite the scientific risks? I don’t think so. John Harris thinks so, but reproductive autonomy does not mean the right to have and raise children at will. If reproductive autonomy were to be guaranteed, incest, bestiality, and adultery would not have been socially problematic in the past, and the fact that they are now illegal in most countries means that Harris’s argument is hard to accept.
John Harris gives eight examples and asks in what ways his opinion is unethical and against human rights and dignity in these cases. To summarize the cases, if infertile couples or people who are single because they have lost their husbands or wives want to have a child that contains their genes, are their desires and wishes unethical and undermine human rights and dignity, and where is the ethical basis for forcing couples who want to have children to become parents of someone else’s child because human reproduction is not permitted? whether a couple’s wishes should be disregarded when they have a genetic disease that increases the chance of having a child with the disease, and whether it is unethical to clone multiple embryos carrying a person’s genes for medical use when a gene is discovered that could cure a disease such as AIDS. The cases that John Harris presented that he thought the proponents would find irrefutable were mostly about personal freedom. Is it right to ignore the biological risks and negative social consequences of human cloning and insist on giving your DNA to a child when the next best option is adoption? I think this is too specific and selfish, and I think the freedom that John Harris is trying to bring to the extreme cases he cites can be suppressed for the reasons I’ve been stating in the paragraph above. I believe that individual freedom can be suppressed in these circumstances because of the public good and the potential for harm to others, and I question whether the idea that embryos could be produced for the purpose of treating serious diseases such as AIDS is an appropriate example to use in the context of opposing human cloning because it would limit human cloning to the embryo stage.
So far, I have argued against John Harris’s argument that human cloning should be encouraged, and I have also incorporated some of the arguments of Hilary Putnam, Ruth Deitch, and Alan Coleman, all of whom are opposed to human cloning. My arguments are dominated by my own views as an opponent of human cloning, but I also draw on the views of Hilary Putnam, Ruth Deitch, and Alan Coleman. Hilary Putnam’s vision of a socially acceptable family, Ruth Ditch’s view of human cloning in terms of public perception and reality, and Alan Coleman’s scientific perspective on the dangers of human cloning helped me organize my thoughts to refute John Harris’s arguments in favor of human cloning. Modern society recognizes the importance of our individual freedom, but it is necessary to extend that individuality to the concept of social responsibility, recognizing the mutually beneficial relationships between individuals and between nations. In that sense, cloned humans are not yet socially responsible and difficult to create based on individual freedom and greed, and I think our society is not yet ready in terms of the human rights of unborn children and the responsiveness of the public. We are not ready to deal with the social repercussions of rushing to do something that is premature. I think human cloning is premature, and I think it’s an area that we shouldn’t touch as a species.