FC: Thomas Leavitt replies to WSJ op-ed that wants clone-ban

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

---

From: "Thomas Leavitt" <thomasleavitt () hotmail com>
To: declan () well com
Cc: lkass () aei org
Subject: Re: FC: WSJ op-ed argues for banning human cloning for four years
Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2002 10:16:01 -0700

Declan,

This just begs for a response. I'm not tremendously enthused about cloning 
myself, but I'm not in favor of government intervention into private 
medical decisions of parents and scientific research methodologies when it 
amounts to nothing more than a discomfort with the choices freely made by 
other people.

Leon claims that his discussion will be "without Owellian or euphemistic 
distortion", which is ironic, considering the following statements, which 
in my view, are classic examples of "The Big Lie" technique - repeat an 
untruth over and over again, and soon people will begin to believe it.

He says, "cloning-to-produce-children ... could never be safely attempted". 
On what basis, at this early stage in the development of knowledge on this 
subject, can he make that statement? It is reminiscent of Simon Newcomb's 
scientific "proof" that powered human flight is "utterly impossible." At 
this point, this can be nothing more than "The Big Lie", as there is no 
factual basis for asserting this.

He says, "it would imperil the freedom and dignity of the cloned child, the 
cloning parents, and the entire society." Now, if this isn't Orwellian 
doublespeak, I don't know what is. It isn't the prospective parents of 
cloned children that are proposing to have the government intervene to 
prevent them from having a child by this method. Nor are they proposing any 
form of coercion or infringement upon my rights - how, praytell, does a 
cloned child threaten my personal freedom and dignity?

He states that this will "confound family relations". Well, by that logic, 
we ought to simply abandon adoption, foster care, and any form of family 
relationship beyond the nuclear family. I, when acting as a semi-parental 
role model to a single woman's children, or in a parental role to my wife's 
children from her first marriage, am obviously "confounding family 
relations". As for having it "create new stresses between parents and 
offspring", well, we might as well just abandon civilization and go back to 
the caves - certainly all those queer kids coming out at age 13 are 
stressing out their families and complicating the parent/child 
relationship. Is he proposing to ban that as well?!?

Mr. Kass says that "enabling parents ... to predetermine the entire genetic 
make-up of their children" should be prohibited. I assume that he's against 
abortion, which is already being selectively used to pick the gender of 
children, and by parents whose offspring are highly likely to be subject to 
lethal inherited genetic diseases. And against genetic therapy, which 
proposes to make wholesale alterations to a the DNA structure of a person's 
cells?

To address this more comprehensively:

Is this bad for society?

a) Generically speaking, a loss of genetic diversity is always bad - 
cloning is the end of natural evolution, and non-diverse cloned species 
have proven very susceptible to massive epidemics and other problems. Will 
this become a common enough practice to endanger the society? Will the 
diversity of the human genome suffer dramatically? Probably not. If things 
come to the point where a significant enough proportion of offspring of the 
human species is produced via cloning, we can deal with this issue then.

b) Will certain traits be edited out of the gene pool to the detriment of 
the species as a whole? (this isn't a cloning specific issue, more of a 
genetic therapy issue) Possibly - imagine the loss to society if 
manic-depressives vanished from history. I have a close relative who is 
manic-depressive, but refuses medication, because it would destroy his 
creative impulse - I have another close relative who is medicated, and the 
cost of this, in terms of the "affect" flattening of his personality, makes 
me understand why the second person refuses medication. Again, we can deal 
with it when that becomes a significant issue, but the justification for 
government and societal interference into this most private of decisions 
has got to be overwhelming in terms of the treat posed, and I don't think 
we are there.

c) On a pratical level, I have severe qualms about humanity mucking about 
its genome at its current state of ignorance... our science is at its 
weakest when dealing with complex emergent systems, and the human genome is 
about as complex and emergent as you can get. ... and again, this isn't 
directly a cloning issue (although I think cloning has a natural affinity 
for this type of manipulation).

Leon says, "we will become a society that creates and uses some lives in 
the service of others". The most simple counter to this is that, every time 
we eat the flesh of an animal, a conscious being, we are doing this to some 
degree. Even a domestically farmed plant (especially since just about all 
of them have been genetically manipulated, either via natural methods or 
genetic engineering) can be said to match this standard. Now, I'm not a 
vegan fanatic, nor do I content that this is no differentiation between 
human life and that of other species (although I think it is a grey smudged 
line, rather than a bright white one), so I do have qualms about the 
commodification of human life implicit in the use of human embryos in 
scientific research, but I think the answer is not an unenforcable ban on a 
major method of research with proven benefits, but instead, an attitude 
adjustment and a prioritization of development of alternative methods that 
have the same benefits. If we adopt an attitude of reverence for life in 
all its aspects, and acknowledge, like some Native American tribes, that we 
are part of the circle of life and honor the sacrifice for our benefit 
represented by the taking of life or use of an embryo, that will foster an 
attitude of respect and do more to prevent abuse than any government 
mandate would.

In short, and in summary, the arguments in support of massive government 
intervention into private choice and scientific research via banning of all 
forms of cloning, including reproductive cloning, amount to nothing more 
than a discomfort with the idea that some people might make choices 
different from those approved by those opposed to cloning, and thus should 
have no weight in a society that places a trust in the judgement of the 
individual, and values personal and individual freedom highly.

Regards,
Thomas Leavitt


--
Thomas Leavitt -- thomasleavitt () hotmail com, Sr. Systems Admin For Hire

Wired since 1981. Internet-enabled since 1990. Web-enabled since 1993. 
Older, wiser, and poorer, post-crash. :)

Personal Home Page and Resume:
http://www.internetmanifesto.org/resume/




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