The article on cloning by Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine, oversimplified some arguments against cloning to produce children (CTPC) and left out the main argument against CTPC, which is its lack of safety. The hazards of CTPC have brought almost universal opposition to it, compared to cloning for biomedical research that has significant support.

      After the announcement of the birth of the cloned sheep Dolly, President Clinton immediately denounced attempts to clone a human being. Two national-level reports on human cloning (National Bioethics Advisory Commission NBAC 1997, National Academy of Sciences NAS 2002) concluded that attempts to clone a human would be unethical due to safety concerns. The House of Representatives 7/01 passed a strict ban on all human cloning. Many nations have banned human cloning. A US gallop poll from 5/02 showed 90% opposed to CTPC.

      8/01 President Bush created the President's Council on Bioethics to review and address the ethical and policy ramifications of cloning. This Council held unanimously that cloning-to-produce children is unethical, and should be indefinitely banned by federal law. The Council clearly explains why there is staunch opposition to CTPC even by those like Clinton who support abortion rights and by the 7 of 17 Council members who supported use of cloned embryos for biomedical research. I will summarize the Council's reasons.

      Reported by the Scotland team, the birth of Dolly required them to produce 277 reconstructed embryos. Of these, 29 were implanted into recipient ewes, and only one developed into a live lamb. At least seven species of mammals have been successfully cloned to produce live births. Yet the production of live cloned offspring is rare and the failure rate is high (live offspring in less than 10% of attempts). Moreover, most of those live-born die soon after birth and those that live longer suffer high rates of deformity and disability. It is hideous to ponder that human individuals would suffer this same fate with CTPC.

      Arguments that support CTPC (desires of infertile couples and transplant donors, maintaining connection to a dying child, replication of certain traits of beauty, intelligence, strength, etc) overemphasize the freedom, desires, and rights of parents, and pay insufficient attention to the well-being of the cloned child-to-be. Once the cloned child is carefully considered, the arguments for CTPC are not sufficient to overcome the powerful case against it. Human rights must logically always be limited if they infringe on the basic rights of another.

      Since World War II, various codes for the ethical conduct of human experimentation have been adopted around the world that, when applied, lead to both a requirement of informed consent of human research subjects and a requirement for a careful assessment of risks and benefits before proceeding with research. CTPC violates the very spirit of these codes that attempt to defend the weak against the strong and uphold the equal dignity of all human beings. This is not a temporary objection, removed by improvements in technique. Conducting experiments in an effort to make CTPC less dangerous would itself be a violation of research ethics.

      Anticipating the possibility of a perfected and usable technology developed by unethical means, it is important to delineate the case against CTPC itself. The President's Council went to great lengths to do this, and my short summary cannot do it justice.

      CTPC would not just be a biological experiment, but an experiment in human procreation, human identity, genetic choice and design, and in family and social life. A society that clones human beings thinks about the dignity of human beings differently than does a society that refuses to do so. The Council's report promotes the importance of our genetic identity to the unique, never-to-be-repeated character of each human life. The Council discussed the dangers to society (promotion of master race mentality, promotion of the child being an object of our sovereign mastery rather than our equal, identity difficulties for the child, the odd relationships that would develop between the generations, etc) and the questions raised about the manipulation of some human beings for the benefit of others, the difference between procreation and manufacture, the meaning of human sexuality, and the respect and protection owed to developing human life.

      Shermer ended his article with the statement "Let's run the cloning experiment and see what happens". Fortunately, there are profoundly intelligent, well-written, and readily available arguments against this viewpoint. The Council concluded that all of us should be modest in claiming to understand the many possible consequences of any alteration of human procreation and human life, especially when there are no compelling reasons to do it. By permanently banning CTPC, the proposed policy of the Council gives force to the strong ethical verdict against CTPC, unanimous in this Council and in Congress, and widely supported by the American people.

Annie Bukacek MD