My Life For Poetry

Monday, April 8, 2002; Page A17  - An impressive list of environmental
groups and individuals, spiced with feminists and various professional and
semi-pro manifesto signers, has endorsed a campaign led by Friends of the
Earth for laws against human cloning. The campaign opposes both sorts of
cloning: not just "reproductive" cloning aimed at producing fully formed
human beings but also "therapeutic" cloning of embryos for use in medical
research and treatment.

The opposition to therapeutic cloning among religious conservatives is easy
to understand and even easy to respect in a way. They believe that a
microscopic clump of a few dozen cells, as self-aware as a block of wood,
has the same human worth and rights as you or me. If that's true, then
cloning embryos to extract stem cells would be just like breeding children
in order to harvest their organs and body parts. And therefore better to
let your mother suffer or die from a potentially curable disease than to
create and destroy that clump. A gruesome but courageous position. And if
you buy the initial premise, it makes sense.

By contrast, most of the anti-cloning liberals and enviros do not believe
in human rights for embryos. So why do they want your mother to suffer
needlessly? It is because of their "deep regard for the natural world" and
"respect for nature" and "the interdependence of humans and our natural
world" and the "precautionary principle" of "regard for the consequences of
our actions" and so on. The only argument these folks offer against
therapeutic cloning -- beyond poetical cliches and vague luddism -- is the
slippery slope: Therapeutic cloning might lead to the other kind, which
might lead to genetic manipulation of the human race.

And of course it might. It's not clear why this prospect crosses some
dreaded line between nature and artifice any more than earlier reproductive
technology, from birth control to in-vitro fertilization, which once got
the same don't-go-there treatment. In any event, even a cloned human being
born and raised through adulthood could not pass on any artificial genetic
traits without more scientific breakthroughs.

In service of these unspecific fears, we would be denying ourselves the
fruits of scientific breakthroughs that have occurred or are more imminent.
Sure, the promise of embryonic stem cells may be oversold, and sure, there
are other promising avenues of medical advance. But none of that makes
shutting off the most promising avenue cost-free. Real human beings will
pay the cost in wrecked or shortened lives.

Friends of the Earth and friends cannot avoid moral responsibility for
wrecking people's lives, as they attempt to do, by calling for a
"moratorium" on therapeutic cloning rather than an outright ban. This is a
classic dodge, offering politicians a way to say "maybe" to a tough
yes-or-no question. But what's the point? Does anyone suppose that moral
philosophers -- beavering away while the medical researchers are forced to
sit on their hands -- will come up with some dazzling insight about how to
make all sides happy? Or that it makes no difference to millions of real
people if a crucial medical breakthrough comes in 2005 or 2015?

Not to be coy, it makes a big difference to me. I have Parkinson's Disease,
for which stem cell research holds extraordinary and imminent promise. Some
might say this is a conflict of interest, and I therefore shouldn't write
about this topic. Ordinarily, of course, like every professional
opinion-peddler, I approach all issues from a perspective of utter Olympian
detachment. It seems more like a bizarre convention than an ethical mandate
that a person's views on a subject should be considered less interesting if
his life is at stake. But anyone who does feel that way is hereby forewarned.

Of course, the goal of much political opinion writing -- on national
security, on the economy, on the environment, among other topics -- is to
convince the reader that everyone's life is at stake, or close to it.
Presumably that includes the author's own. If you shouldn't write about
topics where your own life is at stake in the outcome, no one should write
about the war on terrorism. And the doomy opinions of environmentalists
should be published only if they are incorrect. (Why? Because if the author
is correct in saying that, say, global warming will melt the polar ice caps
and drown us all, her life is at stake and therefore she has a conflict of
interest.)

But it ought to take more than semi-coherent blather about some
"precautionary principle" to stop a potential miracle in its tracks. On
balance, after weighing the arguments on both sides, I think I'd just as
soon not give my life for alliteration.

By Michael Kinsley
2002 The Washington Post Company
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11141-2002Apr7.html

janet paterson: an akinetic rigid subtype, albeit perky, parky
pd: 55/41/37 cd: 55/44/43 tel: 613 256 8340 email: [log in to unmask]
smail: 375 Country Street, Almonte, Ontario, Canada, K0A 1A0
a new voice: http://www.geocities.com/janet313/

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