+ 2(,1 1/,1(Citation: 32 Val. U. L. Rev. 679 1997-1998 Provided by: Charles B. Sears Law LibraryContent downloaded/printed from HeinOnlineThu Oct 6 14:38:31 2016-- Your use of this HeinOnline PDF indicates your acceptance of HeinOnline's Terms and Conditions of the license agreement available at http://heinonline.org/HOL/License-- The search text of this PDF is generated from uncorrected OCR text.-- To obtain permission to use this article beyond the scope of your HeinOnline license, please use:Copyright InformationTHE WISDOM OF REPUGNANCE:WHY WE SHOULD BAN THECLONING OF HUMANSLEON R. KASS"I. INTRODUCTIONOur habit of delighting in news of scientific and technologicalbreakthroughs has been sorely challenged by the birth announcement of a sheepnamed Dolly. Though Dolly shares with previous sheep the "softest clothing,woolly, bright," William Blake's question, "Little Lamb, who made thee?"' hasfor her a radically different answer: Dolly was, quite literally, made. She isthe work not of nature or nature's God but of man, an Englishman, Ian Wilmut,and his fellow scientists. What's more, Dolly came into being not onlyasexually-ironically, just like "He [who] calls Himself a Lamb"2-but also asthe genetically identical copy (and the perfect incarnation of the form orblueprint) of a mature ewe, of whom she is a clone. This long-awaited yet notquite expected success in cloning a mammal raised immediately theprospect-and the specter-of cloning human beings: "I a child, and thou alamb,"' despite our differences, have always been equal candidates for creativemaking, only now, by means of cloning, we may both spring from the hand ofman playing at being God.After an initial flurry of expert comment and public consternation, withopinion polls showing overwhelming opposition to cloning human beings,President Clinton ordered a ban on all federal support for human cloningresearch (even though none was being supported) and charged the NationalBioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC or Commission) to report in ninety dayson the ethics of human cloning research. The Commission (an eighteen-memberpanel, evenly balanced between scientists and non-scientists, appointed by thePresident and reporting to the National Science and Technology Council) invitedtestimony from scientists, religious thinkers, and bioethicists, as well as from* The Addie Clark Harding Professor, The College and The Committee on Social Thought, TheUniversity of Chicago; M.D., The University of Chicago, 1962; Ph.D. [Biochemistry], HarvardUniversity, 1967. An earlier version of this article was published in THE NEW REPUBLIC, June 2,1997, at 17. The article represents a considerable expansion of testimony presented before theNational Bioethics Advisory Commission, Mar. 14, 1997.1. William Blake, The Lamb, in AN OXFORD ANTHOLOGY OF ENGLISH POEMS 535 (1956).2. Id.3. Id.679680 VALPARAISO UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW [Vol. 32the general public. In its report, issued in June, 1997, the Commissionconcluded that attempting to clone a human being was "at this time... morallyunacceptable"; recommended continuing the President's moratorium on the useof federal funds to support the cloning of humans; and called for federallegislation to prohibit anyone from attempting (during the next three to fiveyears) to create a child through cloning.'Even before the Commission reported, Congress was poised to act. Billsto prohibit the use of federal funds for human cloning research have beenintroduced in the House of Representatives' and the Senate6; and one bill, inthe House, would make it illegal "for any person to use a human somatic cellfor the process of producing a human clone."' A fateful decision is at hand.To clone or not to clone a human being is no longer an academic question.II. TAKING CLONING SERIOUSLY, THEN AND NowCloning first came to public attention roughly thirty years ago, followingthe successful asexual production, in England, of a clutch of tadpole clones bythe technique of nuclear transplantation. The individual largely responsible forbringing the prospect and promise of human cloning to public notice was JoshuaLederberg, a Nobel Laureate geneticist and a man of large vision. In 1966,Lederberg wrote a remarkable article in The American Naturalist detailing theeugenic advantages of human cloning and other forms of genetic engineering,and the following year he devoted a column in The Washington Post, where hewrote regularly on science and society, to the prospect of human cloning.' Hesuggested that cloning could help us overcome the unpredictable variety that still4. NATIONAL BIOETIcs ADVISORY COMMISSION, CLONING HUMAN BEINGS, REPORT ANDRECOMMENDATIONS OF THE NATIONAL BIOETHICS ADVISORY COMMISSION iii-iv (1997) [hereinafterNBAC REPORT].5. See, e.g., H.R. 922, 105th Cong. (1997); H.R. 923, 105th Cong. (1997).6. See, e.g., S. 368, 105th Cong. (1997).7. H.R. 923.8. See Joshua Lederberg, Experimental Genetics and Human Evolution, 100 AM. NATURALIST519 (1996); Joshua Lederberg, Unpredictable Variety Still Rules Human Reproduction, WASH. POST,Sept. 30, 1967, at A17.THE WISDOM OF REPUGNANCErules human reproduction and allow us to benefit from perpetuating superiorgenetic endowments. These writings sparked a small public debate in which Ibecame a participant. At the time a young researcher in molecular biology atthe National Institutes of Health (NIH), I wrote a reply to the Post, arguingagainst Lederberg's amoral treatment of this morally weighty subject andinsisting on the urgency of confronting a series of questions and objections,culminating in the suggestion that "the programmed reproduction of man will,in fact, dehumanize him."'Much has happened in the intervening years. It has become harder, noteasier, to discern the true meaning of human cloning. We have in some sensebeen softened up to the idea-through movies, cartoons, jokes, and intermittentcommentary in the mass media, some serious, most lighthearted. We havebecome accustomed to new practices in human reproduction: not just in vitrofertilization (IVF), but also embryo manipulation, embryo donation, andsurrogate pregnancy. Animal biotechnology has yielded transgenic animals anda burgeoning science of genetic engineering, easily and soon to be transferableto humans.Even more important, changes in the broader culture make it now vastlymore difficult to express a common and respectful understanding of sexuality,procreation, nascent life, family, and the