"Human Cloning...Unethical in Itself and Dangerous as a Precedent".(Brief Article)

Editor's note. The following are excerpts from a speech delivered February 26 by Carolyn Willson, the U.S. delegate to the United Nation's Committee on an International Convention Against the Reproductive Cloning of Human Beings.

Mr. Chairman,

We would like to take this opportunity to express our appreciation to the French and German governments for taking the initiative on human cloning, and to the members of the two panels that have provided the Ad Hoc Committee with valuable background information. My delegation welcomes the opportunity to explain the position of the United States on this issue. ...

Human cloning is an enormously troubling development in biotechnology. It is unethical in itself and dangerous as a precedent. The possible creation of a human being through cloning raises many ethical concerns. It constitutes unethical experimentation on a child-to-be, subjecting him or her to enormous risks of bodily and developmental abnormalities. It threatens human individuality, deliberately saddling the clone with the genetic makeup of a person who has already lived. It risks making women's bodies a commodity, with women being paid to undergo risky drug treatment so they will produce the many eggs that are needed for cloning. It is also a giant step toward a society in which life is created for convenience, human beings are grown for spare body parts, and children are engineered to fit eugenic specification.

We cannot allow human life to be devalued in this way. A proposal has been made to ban only so-called "reproductive" cloning, by prohibiting the transfer of a cloned embryo into a woman to begin a pregnancy in the hopes of creating a human baby. This approach is unsound. While upon initial consideration of the issue a ban on reproductive cloning may seem easily attainable and desirable, the issue is very complex and should be addressed comprehensively.

First, a ban that prohibited only "reproductive" cloning, but left "therapeutic" or "experimental" cloning unaddressed, would essentially authorize the creation and destruction of human embryos explicitly and solely for research and experimentation. It would turn nascent human life into a natural resource to be mined and exploited, eroding the sense of the worth and dignity of the individual. This prospect is repugnant to many people, including those who do not believe that the embryo is a person.

Second, to ban "reproductive" cloning effectively, all human ...