Prophecy and Policy

Abstract

When President Clinton convened the National Bioethics Advisory Commission to examine policy options on human cloning, he cited not only matters of morality but also spirituality. His language suggested that there are aspects of cloning that cannot be completely subsumed under an ethics and policy process that gives primacy of place to appeals to procreative autonomy or a risk-benefit methodology; but that instead evoke deeper and substantive matters of human nature, identity, and meaning. Clinton was not alone in this view. A strong scholarly rationale articulated by some NBAC commissioners supported giving serious consideration to religious discussion of human cloning. One cannot, I believe, really understand the current ethical debate without attending to the vigorous disputes among religious scholars when human cloning was first proposed in the mid-1960s as a scientific solution to preserving the endangered species of humanity. Charles Curran, Joseph Fletcher, Bernard Haring, Richard McCormick, and Paul Ramsey, among others, engaged in very probing and substantive arguments about the justifications and boundaries for human cloning that are remarkably prescient for our current situation. Indeed, although the scientific and social context has changed, I do not think the central questions or ethical themes in human cloning are essentially different than those delineated by Fletcher (pro) and Ramsey (con). While many commentators have lamented that cloning is yet another example of how ethics (and law) is continually racing to keep up with scientific research and technology, a review of this history reveals that it is science that has finally caught up with the theological imagination of the 1960s and 1970s. In any event, it reflects an inadequate historical memory to portray human cloning as a new issue in bioethics. The enduring nature of the arguments and themes articulated by these religious thinkers over cloning is characteristic of the voice in bioethics. Prophecy does not necessarily deliver denunciation and critique; it can also function as a historical memory for the broader society, reminding the community of those values constitutive of its common life and its flourishing. Prophetic voices witness to the values that are already embedded in a society's practices and ideology, which may be compromised or in need of reinterpretation in the context of scientific developments. One such cluster of values concerns the moral significance of family, the meaning of parenting, and the ethics of unchosen obligations that are central to familial relationships. A moral commitment to flourishing families is not only central to the life of religious traditions; it is no less fundamental to the life of the community as a whole. The religious interpretations of cloning presented to NBAC functioned as a prophetic historical conscience of the society, enabling the society to remember itself through affirming these basic moral commitments, which stand in striking contrast to the scenarios of single genetic parenting and appeals to procreative autonomy raised by NBAC commissioners and other public speakers. Religious thought reminds society that the moral life cannot be reduced to chosen, contractual relationships, and that prospective parents frequently do not engage in risk-benefit methodologies prior to procreation. A second value that religious thinkers gave prophetic witness to is the dignity of the human person and the corresponding attitude of respectful awe. The achievement of somatic cell mammalian cloning is unquestionably a significant research breakthrough, but testimony on the scientific and philosophical analysis of the prospects for human cloning tended to depersonalization, reducing human beings to valued cells, tissues, and organs. In so doing, the sentiment of awe--which sets boundaries on the manipulation of the person--is diminished or lost. Einstein wrote that the sense of awe and wonder toward the cosmos and the persons who live within it is at the root of both science and religion. …