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B-grade thriller sparks controversy: Hollywood tackles cloning again

By Michael Cook - posted Wednesday, 21 July 2004


With all their banality and lack of logic, these words sum up a common ethical argument for cloning human life. Everyone else is doing it. I’m smarter than they are. I have the technology. I have good intentions. Why can’t I do it? Give me Federal funding by three o’clock this afternoon or I’ll move my lab to Uzbekistan. 

Researchers also contend that miracle cures from cloned embryos would make tinkering with human life ethically acceptable. But what if we reverse-engineer the logic of their ethics? If they can clone embryos, what else can they do with them?

Australia’s most famous bioethicist, Peter Singer, is a dab hand at reverse-engineering. In his view, embryos are morally insignificant blobs. Therefore scientists should be able to clone them and grow headless foetuses for their spare parts. Perhaps that’s why Singer hasn’t been quoted much on therapeutic cloning: he’s a bit too logical.

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Godsend suggests that we ought to think twice about cloning embryos. Bad as the film is, it shows that manufacturing human life in a Petri dish is a moral issue of immense seriousness, not just a technical assignment.

Godsend opens at a good time. Reproductive cloning is banned in Australia, but a vigorous debate over therapeutic cloning will take place soon.

After the Parliamentary stoush over embryo research in 2002, a three-year moratorium on the procedure was declared. This ends next year and its supporters around the world are already pressing for change. A South Korean’s success in cloning human embryos a few months ago proved that it could be done, and Australian scientists are eager to prove their mettle.

Professor Alan Trounson, Australia’s leading spokesman for therapeutic cloning, recently visited the United Nations to lobby for therapeutic cloning. He is part of an international push to ban reproductive cloning while securing public funding for therapeutic cloning. One of the world’s leading medical journals, The Lancet, recently had a special issue on therapeutic cloning and gave it an almost unqualified endorsement.

But as Health Minister Tony Abbott said not long ago: “Not all means are justified even by the best ends - that’s sometimes forgotten by people desperate for miracle cures to horrible diseases.” It sounds as though he saw Godsend too. If he hasn’t, he’s welcome to my slightly abridged pirate copy.

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About the Author

Michael Cook edits the Internet magazine MercatorNet and the bioethics newsletter BioEdge.

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