The author is Professor G. Pence, a lecturer on philosophy and medical ethics at the University of Alabama.  Gregory Pence is a bioethicist philosophically supportive of human cloning, once primate studies have shown it to be safe.  The author can be contacted by email (pence@uab.edu).  See also: http://www.uab.edu/philosophy/faculty/pence/

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The Top Ten Myths about Human Cloning

By Gregory E. Pence 

Professor, Dept. of Philosophy & School of Medicine 
University of Alabama at Birmingham 
Author, Who's Afraid of Human Cloning? (1998) 

1. Cloning Xeroxes a person. 

Cloning merely re-creates the genes of the ancestor, not what he has 
learned or experienced. Technically, it re-creates the genotype, not 
the phenotype. (Even at that, only 99% of those genes get re-created 
because 1% of such a child's genes would come from those in the egg - 
mitochondrial DNA). Conventional wisdom holds that about half of who 
we are comes from our genes, the other half, from the environment. 
Cloning cannot re-create what in us came from the environment; it 
also cannot re-create memories. 
The false belief that cloning recreates a person stems in part from 
the common, current false belief in simplistic, genetic reductionism, 
i. e., that a person really is just determined by his genes. No 
reputable geneticist or psychologist believes this. 

2. Human cloning is replication or making children into commodities. 

Opponents of cloning often use these words to beg the question, to 
assume that children created by parents by a new method would not be 
loved. Similar things were said about "test tube" babies, who turned 
out to be some of the most-wanted, most-loved babies ever created in 
human history. 
Indeed, the opposite is true: evolution has created us with sex 
drives such that, if we do not carefully use contraception, children 
occur. Because children get created this way without being wanted, 
sexual reproduction is more likely to create unwanted, and hence 
possibly unloved, children than human cloning. 
Lawyers opposing cloning have a special reason for using these 
pejorative words. If cloning is just a new form of human 
reproduction, then it is Constitutionally protected from 
interference by the state. Several Supreme Court decisions declare 
that all forms of human reproduction, including the right not to 
reproduce, cannot be abridged by government. 
Use of words such as "replication" and "commodification" also assumes 
artificial wombs or commercial motives; about these fallacies, see 
below. 

3. Human cloning reduces biological diversity. 

Population genetics says otherwise. Six billion people now exist, 
soon to be eight billion, and most of them reproduce. Cloning 
requires in vitro fertilization, which is expensive and inefficient, 
with only a 20% success rate. Since 1978, at most a half million 
babies have been produced this way, or at most, one out of 12,000 
babies. 
Over decades and with such great numbers, populations follow the Law 
of Regression to the Mean. This means that, even if someone tried to 
create a superior race by cloning, it would fail, because cloned 
people would have children with non-cloned people, and resulting 
genetic hybrids would soon be normalized. 
Cloning is simply a tool. It could be used with the motive of 
creating uniformity (but would fail, because of above), or it be used 
for the opposite reason, to try to increase diversity (which would 
also fail, for the same reason). 

4. People created by cloning would be less ensouled than normal 
humans, or would be sub-human. 

A human who had the same number of chromosomes as a child created 
sexually, who was gestated by a woman, and who talked, felt, and 
spoke as any other human, would ethically be human and a person. It 
is by now a principle of ethics that the origins of a person, be it 
from mixed-race parents, unmarried parents, in vitro fertilization, 
or a gay male couple hiring a surrogate mother, do not affect the 
personhood of the child born. The same would be true of a child 
created by cloning (who, of course, has to be gestated for nine 
months by a woman). 
Every deviation from normal reproduction has always been faced with 
this fear. Children greeted by sperm donation, in vitro 
fertilization, and surrogate motherhood were predicted to be 
less-than-human, but were not. 
A variation predicts that while, in fact, they will not be 
less-than-human, people will treat them this way and hence, such 
children will harmed. This objection reifies prejudice and makes it 
an ethical justification, which it is wrong to do. The correct 
response to prejudice is to expose it for what it is, combat it with 
reason and with evidence, not validate it as an ethical reason. 

5. People created by cloning could be used for spare organs for normal humans. 

Nothing could be done to a person created by cloning that right now 
could not be done to your brother or to a person's twin. The U. S. 
Constitution strongly implies that once a human fetus is outside the 
womb and alive, he has rights. Decisions backing this up give him 
rights to inherit property, rights not to suffer discrimination 
because of disability, and rights to U. S. citizenship. 
A variation of this myth assumes that a dictator could make 
cloned humans into special SWAT teams or suicidal bombers. But 
nothing about originating people this way gives anyone any special 
power over the resulting humans, who would have free will. Besides, 
if a dictator wants to create such assassins, he need not wait for 
cloning but can take orphans and try to indoctrinate them now in 
isolated camps. 

6. All people created from the same genotype would be raised in 
batches and share secret empathy or communication. 

Pure science fiction. If I wanted to recreate the genotype of my 
funny Uncle Harry, why would my wife want to gestate 5 or 6 other 
babies at the same time? Indeed, we now know that the womb cannot 
support more than 2-3 fetuses without creating a likely disability in 
one. Guidelines now call for no more than two embryos to be 
introduced by in vitro fertilization, which of course is required to 
use cloning. 
Such assumptions about cloned humans being created in batches are 
linked to nightmarish science fiction scenarios where humane society 
has been destroyed and where industrialized machines have taken over 
human reproduction. But this is just someone's nightmare, not facts 
upon which to base state and federal laws. 

7. Scientists who work on human cloning are evil or motivated by bad motives. 

The stuff of Hollywood and scary writers. Scientists are just people. 
Most of them have kids of their own and care a lot for kids. No one 
wants to bring a handicapped child into the world. Movies and novels 
never portray life scientists with sympathy. This anti-science 
prejudice started with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and continues with 
nefarious scientists working for the Government on The X Files. 
People who call themselves scientists and grandstand for 
television, such as Richard Seed and Brigette Boisselier of the 
Raelians, are not real scientists but people who use the aura of 
science to gain attention. Real scientists don't spend all their time 
flying around the world to be on TV but stay at home in their clinics 
doing their work. 

8. Babies created by cloning could be grown in artificial wombs. 

Nope, sorry. Medicine has been trying for fifty years to create an artificial womb, but has never come close to succeeding. Indeed, controversial experiments in 1973 on live-born fetuses in studying artificial wombs effectively shut down such research. Finally, if anything like such wombs existed, we could save premature babies who haven't developed lung function, but unfortunately, we still can't - premature babies who can't breathe at all die. 
Thus, any human baby still needs a human woman to gestate him for at 
least six months, and to be healthy, nine months. This puts the lie 
to many science fiction stories and to many predictions about cloning 
and industrial reproduction. 

9. Only selfish people want to create a child by cloning. 

First, this assumes that ordinary people don't create children for 
selfish reasons, such as a desire to have someone take care of them 
in old age, a desire to see part of themselves continue after death, 
and/or the desire to leave their estate to someone. Many people are 
hypocritical or deceived about why they came to have children. Very 
few people just decide that they want to bring more joy into the 
world, and hence create a child to raise and support for life as an 
end-in-himself. Let's be honest here. 
Second, a couple using cloning need not create a copy of one 
of them. As said above, Uncle Harry could be a prime candidate. On 
the other hand, if a couple chooses a famous person, critics accuse 
them of creating designer babies. Either way, they can't win: if 
they re-create one of their genotypes, they are narcissistic; if they 
choose someone else's genes, they're guilty of creating designer 
babies. 
In general, why should a couple using cloning have a higher 
justification required of them than a couple using sexual 
reproduction? If we ask: what counts as a good reason for creating a 
child, then why should cloning have any special test that is not 
required for sexual reproduction? Indeed, and more generally, what 
right does government have to require, or judge, any couple's reasons 
for having a child, even if they are seen by others to be selfish? 
Couples desiring to use cloning should not bear an undue burden of 
justification. 

10. Human cloning is inherently evil: it can only be used for bad 
purposes by bad people. 

No, it's just a tool, just another way to create a family. A long 
legacy in science fiction novels and movies make the word "cloning" 
so fraught with bad connotations that it can hardly be used in any 
discussion that purports to be impartial. It is like discussing equal 
rights for women by starting to discuss whether "the chicks" would 
fare better with equal rights. To most people, "cloning" implies 
selfish parents, crazy scientists, and out-of-control technology, so 
a fair discussion using this word isn't possible. Perhaps the 
phrase, "somatic cell nuclear transplantation" is better, even if 
it's a scientific mouthful. 
So if we shouldn't call a person created by cloning, a 
"clone," what should we call him? Answer: a person. 

Copyrighted Gregory E. Pence, 2001. 

If you discover other myths about human cloning, contact me at: pence@uab.edu 
See also: http://www.uab.edu/philosophy/faculty/pence/ 

Greg Pence 
Professor, Philosophy & School of Medicine 
University of Alabama (UAB)