Human Cloning and Human Dignity: The Report of the President's Council on Bioethics

Abstract

In July 2002, the President's on Bioethics (PCB) issued its first report, Human Cloning and Human Dignity. PCB's selection of this first topic was not surprising, in view of the lack of a federal ban on reproductive cloning (what the PCB calls cloning-to-produce-children) and the vigorous, often rancorous debate about research cloning (what the PCB calls cloning-for, biomedical research). Indeed, would have been surprising for the PCB to start with some other topic. After all, when President Bush met with the PCB during its first meeting, he said: Let me say two other things and then I will listen. One, you need to monitor the stem cell issue .... And the other thing is that I have spoken clearly on cloning. I just don't think it's right. the other hand, there is going to be a lot of nuance and subtlety to the issue, I presume. And I think this is very important for you all to help the nation understand what this means. My comments will focus on the report's assessment of ethical arguments for and against cloning-to-produce-children and cloning-for-biomedical research, its divided policy recommendations, and some of the responses has evoked. Anyone interested in the PCB--or in bioethics--should consult its splendid website (http://www.bioethics.gov), an excellent resource from the very beginning and now even better. website provides selected readings, staff background papers and working papers, and superb transcripts of the PCB's meetings. main text of Human Cloning and Human Dignity starts with four relatively brief chapters devoted respectively to The Meaning of Human Cloning: An Overview, Historical Aspects of Cloning, On Terminology, and Scientific Background. They provide an indispensable background for the longer, central chapters--The Ethics of Cloning-to-Produce Children and The Ethics of Cloning-for-Biomedical-Research. final two chapters are Public Options and Policy Recommendations. An appendix includes personal statements, some extensive, by fourteen commissioners (two of whom joined on one statement). Ethics of Human Cloning In many respects, in preparing this report, PCB chair Leon Kass conducted an academic seminar, creating the conditions for a careful and analysis of the ethical arguments for and against human cloning. This possibility grew out of the executive order creating PCB. council shall be guided by the need to articulate fully the complex and often competing moral positions on any given issue, rather than by an overriding concern to find consensus. may therefore choose to proceed by offering a variety of views on a particular issue, rather than attempt to reach a single consensus position. Instead of experts in bioethics, Kass wanted on the PCB thoughtful participants from various disciplinary and professional backgrounds. He wanted a Council on Bioethics, not a council of bioethicists, in part because bioethicists do not address the fundamental questions about scientific and technological developments (Foreward, xvii). (1) report uses such metaphors as depth, breadth, and richness to characterize what is distinctive about its own methodological commitments. It locates human cloning within its larger human and technological context, rather than viewing as an isolated technique (p. 3). report seeks a richer and deeper understanding of what human cloning entails, how we should think about it, and what we should do about it (p. 3). And does so by considering broad human goods that cloning may serve or threaten. This teleological approach examines the meaning of human cloning to produce children and for biomedical research in reference to such broad human goods as procreation and relief of suffering. Because space does not permit a full analysis of the moral arguments, I will concentrate on a few points. report's title suggests that human cloning will be evaluated in light of a conception, or different conceptions, of 'human dignity'. …