A Pragmatic Approach to Human Cloning

Abstract Human cloning presents a bewitching test of any bioethical method. One can scarcely imagine a worse mess to clean up. Public discussion of human cloning was promulgated by Dolly, a cloned Scottish ewe named after a country music singer,6 and inflamed by Richard Seed, a Chicago scientist who played the Jack Kevorkian role of announcing on National Public Radio that he planned to clone himself several times “for fun.” Public debate about cloning centered on stopping Seed, cloning pets and livestock, and the likelihood that a despot somewhere in the world would set about the task of breaking what seems to be an international consensus against the reproductive uses of cloning technologies. Virtually every philosopher with an interest in ethics was suddenly called on by television to play Solomon, or at least Nostradamus, to questions like “Is it ethical to clone a recently deceased child? ” or “Would a clone have a soul? ” Within a year of the birth of Dolly the odd, marginal, and unlikely problem of human cloning had been elevated to one of the most hotly debated issues in twentieth-century science and health.