Pardon my sarcasm, but no one who has followed the recent debate in
Congress regarding human cloning and stem cell research — they are
intertwined — could help being impressed by the sheer stupidity of the
rhetoric, as well as the outcome.
By a lopsided vote of 265 to 162, the House banned all human
cloning, having decided the matter after less than a day of debate. Propelled
largely by religious conviction — now, there’s a reason to ban cloning — the
leadership was ecstatic.
“This House should not be giving the green light to mad
scientists to tinker with the gift of life,” said Rep. J.C. Watts, fourth
in the GOP House leadership.
Congress then went on its summer recess, enabling us all to
entertain the (probably vain) hope that, as the members sit on their
respective front porches, they will reflect on their impetuousness and be
overcome with shame. As they sip their iced teas, they may also come to wonder
why they moved with such alacrity to forbid something that — along with time-
travel and hair restoration — does not yet exist.
For all the talk, human cloning is not quite around the corner.
Cloning has famously been accomplished in sheep (hello, Dolly) but not yet in
dogs or higher mammals. The experts I’ve consulted say we’re talking 30 years
down the road and overcoming daunting difficulties. Fusing new DNA with old
DNA is not as easy as banning the process.
And even then what are we talking about? Why do legislators like
Watts employ the language of grade-B science fiction flicks to talk about
what, someday, may just be another reproductive choice? But he is not alone.
In a recent essay in The New Republic, the ethicists Leon R. Kass and
Daniel Callahan — both of whom were consulted by President Bush — call human
cloning “unethical.” Maybe so, but they never say why.
I grant you the prospect is scary, and no doubt it ought to be
regulated. But at the moment, babies are being produced by in vitro
fertilization. I know of a child produced by once-frozen sperm and carried in
the womb of a surrogate mother. This, to say the least, is not traditional. I
am not at all sure what God thinks of it. Nor does the so-called miracle of
conception always involve something warm and wonderful.
Think of two drunks in the backroom of some frat house. If God
approves of that, then who’s to say He frowns upon a childless couple
producing a clone of one of them? I don’t see the ethical problem here. Taste?
Propriety? Difficulties? Yes to them all. Among other things, the clone would
know its genetic destiny, and it would be saddled, as are identical twins,
with a lifetime of stupid remarks — “How do you know who you are?”
— but these are inconveniences, not momentous moral issues.
Had the House opted for a moratorium on human cloning, it would
have been praised for its sagacity. Instead, it leaped into the debate on stem
cell research. After all, if stem cells have the capacity to reverse or cure
diseases such as Parkinson’s, think of what could be done with cells produced
not by a stranger but by the recipient himself.
Back in 1969, Kevin Phillips published The Emerging Republican
Majority. Now he might want to write The Emerging Republican
Theocracy. It is led in the House by Tom DeLay, Dick Armey, and the
aforementioned Watts. They substitute faith for thought. For a minister,
that’s okay. For a legislator, it’s a sin.
This is a complicated subject — a peek into a frightening and
unknowable future. Congress should move slowly and not be spooked by silly
language about “mad scientists.” If moral questions are what concern
our politicians, then they ought to consider this: If they continue on their
present course, people will die — that’s all there is to it. Tell me the
morality of that.
Richard Cohen is a member of the Washington Post Writers
Group. His work frequently appears in the Flyer.
