The
commonsense case for cloning freedom
by
Bill Winter
Editor, Libertarian Party News (http://www.lp.org)
The same week I
received a review copy of The Naked Clone, I saw a coming attraction
for the movie, Godsend. It's the kind of film that drives John
Charles Kunich nuts.
The movie, due
in December, concerns a young couple whose son is tragically killed.
In despair, they turn to a maverick scientist who clones the child,
bringing a copy of him back to life. All goes well until the clone
child reaches the same age as the original son when he died. At that
point, the ominous music gets louder and supernatural things begin
to happen to the clone, who, of course, is named Adam.
As far as
Kunich is concerned, this kind of nonsense -- along with films like
Star Wars: Episode II and The Boys from Brazil -- has created among
the general public (and more so among politicians) a climate of fear
and loathing about the possibility of cloning a human being.
As a result,
six states have passed bans on cloning; the U.S. House has approved
anti-cloning legislation; the Food and Drug Administration has
claimed authority to regulate cloning (on the grounds that a human
clone would be a "biological product"); and the
President's Council on Bioethics has endorsed a permanent moratorium
on human cloning.
That's why
Kunich wrote the Naked Clone: "To change the direction of the
legal debate on cloning." (The title comes from the fact that a
cloned child would be "naked in the sense of being devoid of
protection, stripped of legal rights, and without any refuge from
the government that forbids him or her even to exist.")
Kunich, a law
professor at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, takes a
decidedly libertarian approach to the issue, arguing that a ban on
cloning endangers "the core constitutional liberties of all
Americans."
But first, he
tries to debunk the myths and muddled thinking that has spawned such
a visceral anti-cloning reaction.
"Much of
the intense animosity has been on the level of unfounded fear,
science-fiction fantasy, moralistic bias, and slippery-slope
prognostications," he writes.
For example,
Kunich takes a sardonic swipe at the clichéd nature of most cloning
debates: One side always predicts that a cloned army of evil Hitlers
will be produced like "copies on a photocopier machine,"
while the other invariably promises a dazzling basketball team full
of cloned Michael Jordans.
Both are
unlikely, if not impossible. To create an army of evil Hitlers, you
would need to find usable Hitler DNA (doubtful), transplant an army
of viable Hitler embryos into an army of willing women (improbable),
and then raise the army of children with the same influences -- from
fighting in World War I to experiencing Germany's national despair
that followed -- that psychologically warped the real Hitler
(impossible).
Cloning Jordan
might be easier, but comes with no guarantees. In one of the book's
cleverest sections, Kunich compares the major league records of Jose
and Ozzie Canseco, who are identical twins (nature's clones).
Despite having the same DNA, Jose played for 17 years in Major
League Baseball and hit 462 home runs, while Ozzie played three
years and hit zero. "Obviously, there was more to the making of
a baseball star than genetic identity," writes Kunich.
The book has a
number of interesting components. Kunich offers a concise history of
cloning research; explains in educated layman's terms exactly how it
works (or, more often, fails to work); and details the difference
between reproductive cloning (the creation of a new organism) and
therapeutic cloning (using specialized cells to create replacement
organs, for example).
Kunich also
helpfully provides a list of reasons why a couple with limited
reproductive options might decide to have a cloned child.
(Conspicuously absent: "To create a team of Michael Jordan
clones.") The reasons are, in most cases, no different than the
reasons any couple decides to have any child.
He even
summarizes the major religious, moral, and ethical arguments against
cloning -- noting that often, at their root, they are driven by a
primitive sense that people shouldn't "play God."
In the most
powerful and useful section of the book, Kunich makes the case for
cloning freedom.
Starting with
perhaps his shakiest argument, Kunich claims that banning cloning
research violates the First Amendment's free-speech protections.
Frankly, it's a bit of a stretch, given the courts' willingness to
ban all sorts of speech. On the positive side, Kunich presents an
interesting primer on the intricacies of First Amendment law.
More
persuasively, Kunich argues that banning human cloning violates the
Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, which
prohibit the government from depriving citizens of "life,
liberty, or property" without due process of law. Since the
Supreme Court has ruled that procreation is "one of the basic
civil rights of man," it would be difficult for the court to
justify banning a technological method that infertile couples might
use to have children, he points out.
Interestingly,
Kunich also argues that the "right of privacy" the U.S.
Supreme Court concocted in Roe v. Wade to legalize abortion should
be extended to cloning. He asks: If a women has the legal right to
terminate a fetus, doesn't she have the corresponding right to bear
a cloned fetus, and bring it to term?
Sure, there are
dangers and drawback to cloning, as there are in any emerging
medical field. However, Kunich makes the (very libertarian) argument
that a combination of medical ethics, professional peer pressure,
and fear of social approbation would convince most scientists to
refrain from unnecessarily risky or improper cloning projects --
even in the absence of a specific law. He even offers proof:
Currently, there are no federal laws in the U.S. against creating a
chimera, a genetic hybrid of a human and an animal. "It was
unnecessary," he writes, for the reasons listed above.
While cloning
might have a higher cringe factor than traditional sex (or even in
vitro fertilization), Kunich argues that, at its core, it is nothing
more than "a process that would result in the birth of a baby,
who, by virtue of an array of environmental and developmental
factors, would grow up to be a unique individual, a fully human
being." As such, cloning, and the human children it could
produce, deserves to be respected, not banned.
The Naked Clone
has its drawbacks. Kunich includes the actual text of anti-cloning
laws passed in six states and considered by the U.S. Congress (15
pages) and an extensively detailed chapter about cloning laws in
foreign countries (20 pages). Were this a textbook for a cloning law
class, it might be appropriate. For the average reader, it's TMI
(Too Much Information). Also, his writing veers between deadly
earnest and oddly flippant, and can be repetitive.
Those quibbles
aside, The Naked Clone is a valuable work for anyone interested in
the collision of politics and cutting-edge science. It is one of the
few books that make a bold, impassioned plea for moralistic
politicians to cease standing athwart science, yelling,
"Stop!" Such a commonsense viewpoint deserves to be more
widely heard. In fact, one could say that it deserves to be cloned.
Copyright
© 1994-2003, Libertarian Party, unless otherwise noted. All rights
reserved worldwide. Permission to re-print review on the
Reproductive Cloning Network (www.reproductivecloning.net) provided
by Professor J. C. Kunich author of "The Naked
Clone".
