An Interview Exploring Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Cloning

Joseph L. Popp is a Harvard-trained anthropologist and the author of the recent book, Popular Evolution: Life-Lessons From Anthropology. In this book, he examines the importance of reproduction and of reproductive rights. I interviewed him about cloning technology and how it might impact population and society.

1. Int: Is cloning a viable means of reproduction for humans?

J.P.: Not only is it viable, cloning technology applicable to humans is a fait accompli.

2. Int: In Popular Evolution you say that reproduction, at least for now, should take precedence over concerns about overpopulation. Is cloning technology a threat to maintaining a sustainable population?

J.P.: No, even in the future when cloning is routine and accepted as just another alternative reproductive strategy, it will not lead to the production of enough children to lead to overpopulation.

3. Int: With cloning technology available, couples are now able to have children without using donor eggs or sperm. Some have likened using donor gametes to inviting a stranger into one's relationship. Do you think that people will prefer to use clonig technology to produce offspring over IVF with a donor gamete, and that the infertile member of the couple might be less resentful of this?

J.P.: My guess is that people will find using cloning technology preferable to IVF with a donor gamete. Even though the cloned child is unrelated to one of his sociological parents, he is related to his other sociological parent (the cell donor) by 1. That makes him related to both of his sociological parents on an average of 1/2, the same as a typical child, and more than a child produced using a donor gamete from anyone except the identical twin of the nonfertile parent. The nonrelated parent loves him because he sees his loved partner in the child and there's no guesswork about half of its heritage.

4. Int.: Might parents favor their own clone?

J.P: They very well might under some circumstances. The goal of parenting a clone is the same as the goal of raising an ordinary child--nurture and support in order to maximize the number of grandchildren that child will produce when he or she is an adult.

5. Int: Would the step-parent of a clone be different from the usual step-parent or the parent of an IVF child who is not a genetic relative? Would the relationship be any different?

J.P.: I think that it would be closer with a clone. The step-parent would see the reflection of his or her partner in the clone and project love along those lines.

6. Int.: The Catholic Church, for one, is officially against cloning. Would they ban clones from membership, or is the goal of increasing the number of members more important?

J.P.: The Catholic Church is also against in vitro fertilization, but do not ban these test-tube babies from the Church. It will be the same with clones.

7. Int:. Why do people of one religious group feel the need to impose their beliefs on others who don't share their religion?

J.P: Religions exist as superculturgens in our society, affecting the brains of their adherents. If a religion fails to impose its standards on outsiders, it can not grow easily. It is a cultural selection process by which the most aggressive evangelical religions spread and survive.

8. Int: Why is the devil invoked whenever people can't understand something?

J.P.: Demons have been blamed throughout history for natural catastrophes and human failings. People advancing science have often been described as cases of demonic possession. Galileo and alternative reproduction technology specialist have been put in the same boat -- accused of violating some ethic. But the evolutionary ethic as described in Popular Evolution explains that gaining reproductive success through techniques like cloning are actually high ethical and desirable.

9. Int: Won't cloning lead to "designer babies"?

J.P.: No, one needs the variability produced by sexual reproduction to produce babies with new designer traits. For example, in vitro fertilization allows for the production of many embryos and the opportunity to choose among them for the desired characteristics. Cloning merely produces identical offspring with no variation and no opportunity to select new traits.

10. Int: Will cloning stop evolution?

J.P.: No, even among organisms that reproduce entirely asexually, evolution still occurs.

11. Int: Why is cloning rare in nature among complex organisms like vertebrates?

J.P.: Sexual reproduction has an advantage over asexual reproduction in complex, higher organisms because it introduces tried and tested genetic variability into the offspring's genotype. In this way mutation rate can be kept to a minimum and still provide variability -- an advantage because new mutations are generally deleterious.

12. Int: Will there be conflict between parent and clone?

J.P.: Yes, there may be, but not adaptive conflict, because they share their entire genotype in common. In other words, they a related by 1, and should agree on all social behaivor between them.

13. Int: Will cloning lead to immortality?

J.P.: No, immortality for the individual is not a product of cloning. Each clone will have its own identity from environmental factors such as nutrition, education, socialization and parenting. all though it is true that clones share their genetic material in common, it takes genes and environment to produce human traits.

14. Int: Will clones be created as adults?

J.P.: No, clones are born just like normal babies. They require a period of maturation just like any child to reach adulthood.

15. Int: Would it be possible to create a perfect human being?

J.P.: No, natural selection designs individuals that are adapted to their environment. No single genotype and phenotype could be perfect for the wide variety of environments in which humans find themselves in a modern world.

16. Int.: It seems that policies in places such as China, where one is allowed to put a baby up for adoption and have others care for it outside China, affects the world population more than cloning would. Do you agree?

J.P: For the foreseeable future the number of cloned babies will be so small that it will not appear as even a small blip on the demographic charts. Reproduction by conventional means is too easy and too much fun to be replaced or even seriously challenged. But for those people needing to clone it can be a life-saving gift.

17. Int.: People railed against the telephone as an evil device, and it turned out to be a marvelous enhancement to our lives and a stepping stone to further discoveries. Can we expect the same from cloning technology?

J.P.: Yes, cloning to some will be more important than all the consumer technologies available today. I know from my fifteen years of work in Africa that people may lack material riches but still find great satisfaction and happiness in life through raising a family.

18. Int: Should people have the right to clone their parents without their permission? How about living children? How about living children where the mother would like to clone them and the ex-spouse objects? Who should have the say?

J.P.: The person whose reproductive success is most affected has the right to determine if a clone will be created.

19. Int.: Does the government have the right to tell us what to do with our own genes?

J.P.: No, I have argued before for unalienable reproductive rights for all. Governments will try to control cloning, but they will fail on a grand scale because the purpose and need for cloning is so great.

20. Int.: Do you think that using cloning technology to allow couples to have genetically related children or to save people from dreadful diseases can harm society in any way?

J.P.: No, that which helps one to maximize one's reproductive success is always good. And remember, from a sociobiological viewpoint societies exist for the good of individuals within them. Individuals do not exist for the good of society.

21. Int.: Will cloning affect the number of adoptions of nonrelatives?

J.P.: Well, there are more than a million couples in America waiting to adopt. To satisfy that number cloning would have to be done on a scale far greater than we can now imagine.

22. Int.: In your opinion, who should be allowed to be cloned? If a person wanted to clone a dead child, which happened to have Down's syndrome, would that be permitted? How defective is defective?

J.P.: Cloning, like in vitro fertilization, offers great opportunities to assure the absence of genetic defects in offspring. Tests can be run to determine the existence of trisomy of the 21st chromosome while the embryo is still very young and before it is implaned into the uterus. And it is not difficult to imagine a future procedure in genetic engineering that allowed for a normal child to be cloned from a Down's syndrome child.

23. Int.: Some people have said that cloning can make one sex or the other unnecessary to those who wish it.

J. P.: One could imagine a bizarre scenario in which women decided to do away with the reproduction of men. But that would close the door on sexual reproduction. As explained elsewhere in this article, sexual reproduction has some big advantages for higher organisms. Therefore, men can rest assured that they will be around for a long time.

24. Int.: Do you think that cloned children will have problems within the family, or feel uncomfortable in it?

J.P.: No, a cloned child that is related to its parent by 1 will feel just as comfortable as a typical child related by 1/2. Remember that a typical child shares 1/2 of his genes in common with a normal brother or sister, and will also share 1/2 of his genes in common with a clone of either parent

25.Int. An anthropology professor once said in a class I was attending in cultural Anthropology that the true reason for the taboo on incest is that it upsets the societal relationships. Let's talk about cloning and societal relationships. Let's take, for example, a woman with one daughter who can't have more children but who very much wants more. She decides to produce more daughters by cloning herself, her mother, and her daughter, all with their permission, all born at the same time. Looking at the family relationships from the point of view of the cloned mother, she is her grandmother's sister (twin), her daughter's fraternal twin and another daughter's daughter, and her grand-niece's fraternal twin. Also, her relationship to the older daughter is that of little sister, but in actuality this older girl will be taking her great aunt to the park to play on the swings. Will this matter? In addition, these girls will be related to each other by 1/2 or by 1/4, but will all have different biological fathers and an unrelated sociological father, but will be related to their mother by 1/2 or by 1. Do you see any problem with this as this family grows? Won't we have to create a new kind of family tree to accommodate these relationships?

J.P.: Yes, a new kind of family tree is in order. But it will be based on the same old measure of genetic proximity: Hamilton's Regression Coefficient of Relatedness. We already have animal societies with very different genetic relationships among their members than what appear in the human family. Among the Hymenoptera (ants, bees and wasps) a female is related to her sister by 3/4 and to her brother by 1/4. Males have no fathers and a mother is related to her sons by 1. Yet, these societies function beautifully along the lines of inclusive fitness theory.