The other day I was listening to a conference Axel Khan was giving on ethics in the context of genetic manipulation. There were several questions that were addressed there, and I was surprised by the general ingenuity that pervaded the questions and even some answers. Some years ago, while discussing the same subject with a close friend of mine, she said: `everything that can be done, will ultimately be done'. This seems to me a good point of departure for a discussion on such subjects. If we decide to forbid clonation for reproductive purposes, a decision that would be wise, there will always be some crazy millionaire which will be so obsessed with himself so as to finance some third world laboratory in order to get a genetical copy of himself.

Reproductive clonation should be legally interdicted, among several reasons, to protect future children from unfair expectations put on them by their parent. But clonation seems to be given more relevance that it has, as if it were the ultimate menace to humanity. And this is not so. If society has been able to cope with such a parent, it is most likely to be capable of coping with the copy. More dangerous will be attempts to clonate historical or mythical human beings such as Hitler or Jesuscrist (from the blood stains in the sudarium). To begin with, even if only 40% of our personality depends on the environment, it will be impossible to reproduce a human being. Moreover, the same human being (if it were possible to produce such a copy) would have different effects in different historical or social environments. On the other hand, if some religious fanatic tried to accelerate a second coming, he would most likely end up with the copy of a not very smart 13th century burglar.

In the long run, clonated children will be as unusual as incestuous progeny, and such births will have similar social acceptance. Such births will never be accepted by society (and rightfully), but the human community will not feel endangered by them.

Farther in time, but surely to come, is the possibility of, once the technique allows it, choosing one's child's eyes, hair colour, and such. There are several things that could be said against such practices, the main one being that children are not to be chosen as if they were dolls, putting Bette Davis eyes or Elvis pelvises on them. But this possibility is not the ultimate one. One could foresee a world in which the possibility exists of taking the gene pool of each of the two parents and carefully choosing from the four alleles of each gene the pair that will insure that the child will have the desired (assumedly the best possible) characteristics. Such a thing should be done taking into account all the difficulties that cross reactions among sets of alleles would provoke. In that way, we would be able to produce, by artificial means, a child that could perfectly have been produced by natural means. I find such a possibility disturbing, but I have not been able to find a single solid reason against it. Can someone find one?

Last modified: Tue Oct 15 23:25:23 CEST 2002