--- From: "Thomas Leavitt" <thomasleavittat_private> To: declanat_private Cc: lkassat_private 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 -- thomasleavittat_private, 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/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon Jul 15 2002 - 23:08:12 PDT