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Monday, December 05, 2005

"What Would a Clone Say?"

Like Gary Rosen, I read and thoroughly enjoyed Kazuo Ishiguro's recent novel, "Never Let Me Go."  (See Rosen, "The Way We Live Now:  What Would a Clone Say?", N.Y. Magazine, Nov. 27, 2005, available here).  The novel is, in a nutshell, a coming-of-age story about Kathy H., who (along with her boarding-school classmates) is a clone created entirely for organ-donation purposes.

Rosen uses "Never Let Me Go" as the starting point for what he characterizes as a Kantian, non-religious argument against "therapeutic" cloning:

[Y]ou don't have to be a raving Bible-thumper to entertain moral doubts about so-called therapeutic cloning . . ..  All you need is a bit of Kant from Ethics 101, especially the part about treating other people, presumably even proto-people, not as a means to your own ends but as ends in themselves.  It is an injunction hard to square with the literature on S.C.N.T., with its talk of "harvesting" and "programming" stem cells.  The language of the scientists and their supporters is clinical, meliorative and humane, but it gives off an unmistakable whiff of cannibalism.

Some see the cloning debate as just another skirmish in the abortion war. After all, if it is permissible to abort an embryo, what could be wrong with putting it to some lifesaving use instead?  But abortion is an ordeal unsought by the woman who faces it, a tragedy of circumstance.  There is, by contrast, nothing accidental or contingent about creating nascent human life with the declared aim of destroying it.  It is the deliberate use of one (developing) person as the instrument of another, a practice that should give pause even to those who ardently favor abortion rights.

I agree with Rosen's bottom line, I suppose.  Still, I guess I regret what appears to be his premise, namely, we should be relieved to learn that naked Kantian assertions about "not using persons as means" -- which, Rosen assumes, also apply to "proto-people" -- provide a basis for opposing cloning, since we would otherwise be stuck with the unimpressive "moral doubts" of "raving Bible-thumpers" (like, I guess, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, or Gilbert Meilaender, or Leon Kass, or . . .).

Putting aside my doubts about whether the Kantian "ends, not means" dictum is really a non-religious claim, I'm curious:  Do others think that Rosen is a bit too hasty in assuming that the argument applies to "proto-persons"?  I mean, should we expect Rosen's intended audience -- those unmoved by the "raving Bible-thumpers" -- to react by thinking, "ah, of course, neither 'proto-people' nor real people may be used as means for others' ends"?

Posted by Rick Garnett on December 5, 2005 at 08:26 PM in Religion | Permalink

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Comments

My brain needs a computer.

Posted by: Jim Brown | May 8, 2006 12:35:26 PM

and teleological, too.

Posted by: pg | Dec 5, 2005 10:50:49 PM

"Putting aside my doubts about whether the Kantian "ends, not means" dictum is really a non-religious claim"

GAAAAGGGGGGGGGGHHHHH!

Sorry. I was having a conniption fit. Calling Kant religious, just because he occasionally hid behind a telelogical argument or two...

Right. Anyway, I don't seem to see my copy of Foundations anywhere with reach, but I'd think that the humanity formulation would apply to any being with free will/reasoning capacity. The (highly) basic Kantian notion (in my limited understanding) is that this (our essential human quality) is what confers value (as well as being the precondition for moral agency), it is the end.

So if proto-people are indistinguishable from real-people at the same stage of development in terms of the potential for free will/reason, I'd say they get the benefit of Rosen's argument.

Posted by: Paul Gowder | Dec 5, 2005 10:48:28 PM

As a clone clearly the imperative is to assasinate your cell donor before he or she needs anything from you. You've got an advantage in being younger and faster--and if you're lucky maybe there's four of you--but the original has more money and connections. Anyway, forget boarding schools. Wouldn't you have to keep these clones locked up? There's a movie out where they're kept on an island, now that I think of it.

Posted by: MT | Dec 5, 2005 10:33:18 PM

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