REPLY RE CLONING: Reader Mark Solomon summarizes the basic case for cloning. I think this gets at the basic arguments pretty well, with a few exceptions (I disagree that reason is the slave of the passions, for example; and for the record, no, I was not being disingenuous, I think reproductive cloning is bad for the reasons I stated and not merely as a stand-in for embryo-destructive research, and I was arguing against the pro-cloning writers for Reason), so I’ll just let you all read the email and then refer you to the other places where I’ve discussed the consequences of Solomon’s position: problems with valuing humans for their mental qualities;problems with valuing only the lives that we want to mourn; general post on abortion. Solomon says he cries for Christopher Reeve, not for the blastocysts whose lives would be ended so that (maybe) (eventually) Reeve (might) walk again. There are all kinds of scientific research methods that could produce cures, but that we bar because they are inhumane; for example, we have pretty strict consent requirements for human subjects, even when that means some kinds of research can’t be done. It doesn’t matter whether the people harmed are people that we might not care that much about (“I don’t cry for the retarded.” “I don’t cry for hardened criminals”). An ethic of love can’t be based on a practice of use–using humans as discardable tools. So that’s my deal. (And yes, I do think an ethic of love is ultimately religious, but many non-religious people share premises that should lead them to the same conclusion.)

One thing I definitely don’t get: Solomon writes, “Why are brain waves special? I don’t know, Ms. Tushnet, why is air special? Because we need it to breathe? …Brain waves are special because without them, we are unequivocally dead.” Well, but we’re not, if we’re pre-brainwaves rather than post-. A blastocyst isn’t dead. It’s alive. If it does not have an impressive or morally important kind of life, OK then, when does it attain that importance? If it’s at the point when brainwaves begin, 1) does that lead Solomon to oppose late-term abortion? and 2) I’m not sure what makes brainwaves (rather than, say, hopes, plans, desires, emotions, loves, or thoughts–the things brain waves are, eventually, for) special. If what’s really valued is hopes, plans, etc., does it matter than newborns don’t have such things any more than blastocysts do? I’m not trying to be snarky, I just genuinely don’t understand Solomon’s position. (Unlike, say, Julian Sanchez’s position, which I disagree with but think I more or less understand.)

Oh, and it’s not just that I think the arguments for cloning are lame; I think the arguments against it are good. I don’t think it really matters where you assign the burden of proof. Also, I apologize for not running this sooner; this week is cleaning-out-the-inbox week at EveTushnet.com, after I went over a month, I think, without printing any mailbag posts. Anyway, everything that follows is Solomon; I didn’t put it in bold because I bet that would look lousy.

Hello,

I have just read your anti-cloning articles, and I must say, I am puzzled by your objections to the practice. I won’t attempt a truly organized approach, but will rather take your points as they come.

You state that pro-cloning arguments are “contradictory.” If you mean that certain pro-cloning arguments contradict other pro-cloning arguments, I didn’t notice where you pointed them out. I certainly didn’t see any contradictions.

You answer your own ‘twin’ objection quite well: according to pro-cloners, blastocysts used in therapeutic cloning are indeed, according to pro-cloners with some sense, ‘twins too young to matter’. For the validity of that argument, we must look at the ‘appeal to emotion’.

I agree that Glenn Reynolds’s ‘God the supreme abortionist’ argument is pathetic. Something’s natural mortality rate should have nothing to do with how we actively increase or decrease that rate. I also agree that the ‘seen/unseen’ dichotomy is false. These are sad arguments for allowing cloning — you’re perfectly correct. So then we come down to the basic question behind all this nonsense: is a blastocyst a human being worthy of protection? And this is where, I’m sorry to point out, *your* argument becomes self-contradictory. You chastise Postrel and Reynolds for making appeals to “emotion,” but then engage in that exact same practice yourself,

appealing to a highly emotional definition of the continuity of human existence in a ‘single’ body. There is nothing scientific — and much that is objectionable — about Gallagher’s approach to the continuity of human existence justifying a total ban on therapeutic cloning.

First of all, the idea of human continuity is completely unsupported. She states, but does not prove (I have not read her book) that a multicellular blastocyst and a toothless old women are “all stages of life of the same thing… [that] we each remain the same human being that we were…” This is stating a conclusion, not supporting it. By what definition do we remain the same human being? Every month or so, your entire body dies and is reproduced; that is to say, at varying rates of reproduction, every cell in your body dies and is replaced by a new cell according to the dictates of your genetic code. You are, by a very reasonable definition, a new human being every month. In another sense, your attitudes, beliefs, and personality may change so drastically that you will scarcely recognize your younger self a few years down the road (“I can’t believe I did that, wow, I was crazy back then, etc”). Again, you might be called a new human being. What of people who undergo Alzheimer’s disease, or suffer mind-erasing injuries or illnesses — aren’t these new human beings too? Well, no *and yes*. To state that there is some continuity of existence is to impose

arbitrary norms on the very chaotic and definition-resistant existence that we call life. If you are to do so, as we all do and must, you have to defend those norms. You have to defend why it is important for us to protect blastocysts as human beings. And this, like every other argument, at its heart requires an emotional appeal!

I am a law student, very familiar with arguments that pretend to be more than what they are. Everything we believe, we believe because of an emotion, because of an emotional reaction to reason, or to simple human dignity or suffering, or something else. You cannot take the emotion out of society-shaping arguments. Therefore, I am not suggesting that you were wrong to use an emotional appeal in your article. You were wrong to pretend you were doing otherwise — and furthermore, I think your emotional reaction is grounded in a fundamental misunderstanding about morality and the value of human life.

Your emotional reaction, I believe, boils down to your argument about brain waves, which is just a placeholder for a general question about the beginning of life, and what it means to be a human being. I think your ex-roommate’s objection to the brain wave divide is foolish and simply sets up a target to knock it down: No one is arguing that people are more or less human based on the relative activity of one’s brain at a given time, so why is she fighting the idea? What pro-cloning people argue is that there

is a valid difference between 0 brain waves and 1 brain wave. If you understand the difference between an absence of something and the existence of something, as I’m sure you do, why does it bother you when people draw a very reasonable line right there? I am particularly perplexed because in the very next paragraph you say, “There are no degrees of human life” — exactly! There’s no life, and then there’s life: no brain waves, brain waves. Your mistake comes in the next phrase: either you’re an

individual life or … just a sperm and an egg.” No! Either you’re an individual life, or you’re just a sperm and an egg, OR you’re just a collection of cells containing DNA that will *eventually* become a human life, when you start having brain waves. Why are brain waves special? I don’t know, Ms. Tushnet, why is air special? Because we need it to breathe? Why is the sun special, because it gives life to nearly everything on this earth? Brain waves are special because without them, we are unequivocally dead.

There is no thinking, no feeling, no nothing. If you have a religious objection to this, I throw up my hands.

You seem to believe that there is value inherent in being something with the *potential* for life. I agree, but it’s not a great value. Having the potential for life is not the same as having life (and by life, I mean meaningful, valuable life, not “life” as defined by being a non-ceccile, reproducing, carbon-based organism). A blastocyst is no more alive (again, for our purposes) than the sperm and egg are separately. It is an arbitrary (though obviously technically important) point of union that bears no

relationship to what we as thinking, feeling human beings believe is life.

If you really believe that blastocysts are alive and fully vested with human rights, well… what would that even mean? Should we hold funerals for dead blastocysts, etc.? You address this earlier, and talk about extreme measures, etc… This is mealy-mouthed nonsense, and you seem to know it. No one, including the most radical pro-lifer, is sad when a blastocyst dies.

No one mourns it. It is not even a miscarriage. Well, if no one in real life mourns their death, what are we fighting about? Back in the real world, we have people suffering and dying of horrifying, crippling diseases the very palpable pain and agony from which you or I can scarcely imagine. It *is* an emotional question as to which interests we will protect, and one with an easy answer, as far as I’m concerned. In your article against reproductive cloning, you make several arguments for denying it (though this too seems to be a straw man for getting at therapeutic cloning, and more importantly, abortion), none of which are convincing to me. You make what I felt was — I’m sorry — a very silly argument relating to traditional parent-sibling roles. Conservatives like to pretend that such “roles” actually bear some resemblance to the way most people grow up, or that these roles actually have an effect on whether or not a person grows up to be a productive, decent human being. Nothing could be further from the truth. I happen to have grown up in a traditional family, but I know dozens of people who didn’t who grew up to be terrific adults, and I can think of, oh, millions of people who did who grew up to be living nightmares. Go figure. Then you state that we can’t achieve cloning without atrocity. Well, yes we can: If we perfect the techniques on animals, whose moral status is not negligible but for practical reasons is much lower than humans, we can probably avoid such sci-fi movie outcomes as those you predict. Finally: Who really cares about reproductive cloning? I’ve never heard an argument for doing it that went beyond a Beavis & Butthead-like: “Heh, heh, it’s cool.”

A few other thoughts: You don’t mention it, but like other pro-life people I imagine you find some comfort in the fact that by stopping abortions, you are protecting a unique life that otherwise would not have existed. What about women who have abortions because they are not yet ready to have a child, but then have one later on? By forcing them to carry the first child to term (and instituting a very palpable, painful and dangerous form of slavery, I hope you understand), you do succeed in giving life to the

presently existing child that will grow from the blastocyst, but you also erase the existence of the potential future child down the road. Again, you make an emotional decision, but not one that is very rational, in my opinion.

Finally, I am just completely perplexed at why you wrote this article. You don’t seem to have an innate objection to cloning (as you admit somewhere in the piece). You believe that the arguments in favor of it aren’t strong enough. I ask you: Why did you place the burden of proof on pro-cloning arguments, and not the other way around? If you are rational (and humane) enough to understand the reasons for wanting people like Christopher Reeve and countless other disabled Americans to walk again, to

laugh and live and love and breathe again, why do you put the onus on them to prove that these methods of helping them are valid? You *can* stop science, you’re right. But, Ms. Tushnet, *why would you do so here*? I, for one, don’t cry for the blastocysts. I cry for people like Christopher Reeve. I don’t know, I guess I’m just emotional.