June 2001
Tears of a Clone? An Economic Defense of Cloning's Humanity
by Martin Zelder
Most people oppose the idea of human cloning for reproductive purposes. Should they? While many characterize cloning as monstrous, few have approached the issue with calm economic logic. This essay does, and yields the conclusion that objections to reproductive cloning are hard to justify.
The most recent prominent example of hostility to cloning is located in Allan Rock's draft legislation on reproductive technology, the Assisted Human Reproduction Act (Health Canada, 2001a). It stipulates that "No person shall knowingly create or participate in the creation of a human clone or transplant or participate in the transplantation of a human clone into a human being" (Health Canada, 2001a, section 3(1)(a). Justification for the ban is found in an accompanying document: "Human cloning ... treats human beings as though they were objects and does not respect the individuality of human beings. The health of human clones could be at risk, since animal cloning is associated with frequent miscarriages, malformations, and early death. Also, there would likely be psychological burdens on a cloned child" (Health Canada, 2001b, p. 5).
These concerns reflect the objections articulated by numerous commentators, including bioethicists. According to noted bioethicist Arthur Caplan: "No reputable scientist, other than cults, cranks, kooks and capitalists believe that science is ready for human cloning" (Russo). All objectors essentially identify potential harms to cloned children as the basis for objection. Thus, a principled economic analysis should consider possible costs, and compare them with the corresponding benefits.
Consider first the benefits. They principally revolve around the value of fertility to otherwise effectively infertile individuals, and the value of reproducing the genes of a particular individual for those not effectively infertile. While those who are effectively infertile (including gay and lesbian couples) can reproduce by other artificial means or adopt, these other options reduce genetic similarity (except for the case of assisted heterosexual reproduction where parental egg and sperm are both healthy).
The second source of benefit, reproduction of a particular individual, has been suggested to be of particular importance for the case of parents who lose a child (for non-genetic reasons, obviously). In such cases, the dead child's DNA could be copied to create a cloned replacement.
Against these benefits, many raise what appear to be profound costs. They consist of two potential forms of harm to clones: physical and psychological. Consider the physical. As described by the ethicist Caplan, human cloning "will give you a dead baby, a defective baby or a deformed baby" (Falco). While dramatic, these claims are convincingly rebutted by Princeton University molecular biologist Lee Silver, who reports that "there is no scientific basis for the belief that cloned children will be any more prone to genetic problems than naturally conceived children" (Silver, p. 103). As he points out, the chances of the most common form of birth defect, stemming from chromosomal abnormalities, are "greatly reduced" in a cloned fetus compared to a conventionally-produced one (Silver, pp. 103-104). Furthermore, the chance of the second most common type of abnormality, due to defective genes in both parents in a conventional birth, is eliminated in a cloned birth, where only one set of genes is present (Silver, p. 104). Finally, the least common defect, due to abnormal sperm or egg, is equally common in cloned and conventional children (Silver, p. 104).
But even if one rejects the notion of physical harms to clones, cloning opponents still point to psychological harms. Characteristic of this view is the concern of bioethicist Leon Kass, who foresees three distinct psychological traumas: "confusion of identity and individuality," "human children as [manufactured] artifacts," and "despotism of the cloners over the cloned" (Kass, pp. 26-27). Regarding individuality, however, evolutionary biologist Steven Jay Gould points out that (conventional) identical twins are both more biologically similar and more subject to similar environments than a clone and its parent would be (Gould, pp. 47-48). Thus, evidence that identical twins still frequently differ from each other behaviourally implies that clone and parent would be even more likely to be distinct individuals.
As for Kass's concern about cloned children being manufactured artifacts, which he alleges would be "profoundly dehumanizing" (Kass, p. 39), no evidence exists that any of the thousands of children produced by in vitro fertilization since its advent are "dehumanized." Finally, although Kass alleges that cloning is "inherently despotic, for it seeks to make one's children ... after one's image," (Kass, p. 42), this could be equally claimed of conventional reproduction.
In any case, even if physical and psychological harms were found to afflict some cloned children, it is illogical in most cases to suggest that a clone with such a shortcoming or limitation is worse off than if he or she had never been created at all; this point is made by many, including Epstein (1998), Brock (1998), and Silver (1997), among others. Ultimately, perhaps, the only justified limitations on cloning might arise when a proposed parent has extreme characteristics. For example, should an 80-year-old with no partner and no relatives be allowed to clone himself, given that he would be statistically unlikely to survive to the child's adulthood, or even past its tenth birthday?
What such a question and the foregoing discussion suggest is that concerns about cloning are, fundamentally, concerns about parenting. And while there may be room for improvements along these lines (see "For Better or For Worse?" in this issue), prohibiting cloning, as Canada proposes to do, is a policy not worth copying.
References
Brock, Dan W. (1998). "Cloning Human Beings: An Assessment of the Ethical Issues Pro and Con." In Martha C. Nussbaum and Cass R. Sunstein, eds. Clones and Clones: Facts and Fantasies About Human Cloning. New York: W.W. Norton.
Epstein, Richard A. (1998). "A Rush to Caution: Cloning Human Beings." In Nussbaum and Sunstein, eds. Clones and Clones. New York: W.W. Norton.
Falco, Miriam (2001). "Cloning Experts to Tell House Committee Pros, Cons." CNN.com/HEALTH (March 28). Digital document: http://www.cnn.com/2001/ HEALTH/03/27/cloning.reality/index.html
Gould, Stephen Jay (1998). "Dolly's Fashion and Louis's Passion." In Nussbaum and Sunstein, eds. Clones and Clones. New York: W.W. Norton.
Health Canada (2001a). "Draft Legislation: Assisted Human Reproduction Act." Digital document: http://www.hc-sc. gc.ca/english/reproduction/legislation.pdf
Health Canada (2001b). "Proposals for Legislation Governing Assisted Human Reproduction: An Overview." Digital document: http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/english/reproduction/repro_over.pdf
Kass, Leon R. (1998). "The Wisdom of Repugnance." In Leon R. Kass and James Q. Wilson, eds. The Ethics of Human Cloning. Washington: The AEI Press.
Russo, Robert (2001). "Quebec-Based Sect Could Soon Be Cloning Humans, Leader Tells US Panel." Yahoo! News Canada. Digital document: http://ca.news. yahoo.com/010329/6/3tew.html
Silver, Lee M. (1997). Remaking Eden: Cloning and Beyond in a Brave New World. New York: Avon Books.
Martin Zelder is Director of Health Policy Research at The Fraser Institute. He has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago.
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