Introduction

Abstract

Although this issue of The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy is nonthematic, the articles it contains are similar in the way each employs a novel approach for understanding or examining an important issue. Each author has sought to reinterpret the context of a particular debate by pointing out a tension between the separate ethical treatments of related procedures, identifying where a debate has been misguided, taking a more practical and inclusive approach for establishing fair principles, suggesting a new framework of evaluation, or reinterpreting a well-worn thought experiment. In “Therapeutic Cloning and Reproductive Liberty,” Robert Sparrow identifies and examines a widely neglected tension that arises between the separate ethical treatments of therapeutic and reproductive applications of somatic nuclear cell transfer cloning. In the context of reproductive cloning, the genetic parents of the embryo are granted authority over its production and destruction in accord with the concept of reproductive liberty. Alternatively, in cases of therapeutic cloning, the patient, or DNA donor, is granted authority over the embryo. The tension, as identified by Sparrow, exists regarding who—the DNA donor or the genetic parents of the embryo—has authority over the embryo's fate. He observes that if reproductive liberty, as it is conceived of in defending reproductive cloning, is the appropriate approach, then therapeutic cloning is “prima facie unethical unless it occur[s] with the consent of the genetic parents of the person being cloned” (Sparrow 2009, 103). However, if therapeutic cloning does not violate the reproductive liberty of the genetic parents of the embryo, then the defense of some types of reproductive cloning that rely on the genetic relation between parent and child will be undermined.