Monash Bioethics Review Vol. 21 No. I

ARTICLES

79 Ethics Committee Supplement

Human reproductive cloning: Ananalysis of the Andrews ReportKIM LITTLEMonash Centre for Public Philosophy

ABSTRACTThere is nothing like an ovenuhelming consensus of opinion toencourage a less than rigourous approach to analyzing complexethical issues. Unfortunately, this is nowhere more apparent thanin the discussion of human reproductive cloning contained in thefederal House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legaland Constitutional Affairs' report on human cloning, released lastAugust. The report may well fulfil the first half of its project,namely the empirical task of adequately summarizing andcategorizing the various submissions made to the Committee.However, it is clearly inadequate as a discussion of the ethicaland legal pennissibility ofhuman reproductive cloning.

1. INTRODUCTIONIn the Australian system, the purpose of parliamentary

committees is to perform a series of functions that the Houses ofParliament are not well suited to perform. These include the carryingout of inquiries, taking testimony from witnesses, analyzing evidence,discussing matters in detail and formulating reasoned conclusions.Particularly where the issue is complex and controversial, reports madeby parliamentary committees that proficiently perform these functionscan be invaluable in directing the course of legislative action.

On the 10th of August 1999, the federal Standing Committee onLegal and Constitutional Affairs, chaired by Kevin Andrews MP, wascommissioned by the Minister for Health to review the report of theAustralian Health Ethics Committee of the National Health and MedicalResearch Council on human cloning, released in December 1998 ("theAHEC report").

While much of the academic and media attention directedtowards the Andrews Report has focused on the issues of stem cellresearch and therapeutic cloning, here I will consider those parts of thereport, in particular Chapter Six, which are concerned with humanreproductive cloning ("HRC").!

While there is widespread disagreement about the use of cloningtechniques for therapeutic purposes, there is near universal agreement,in Australia and overseas, that to clone for reproductive purposes

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would be an ethically impermissible act of the sort that should besubject to an unconditional legislative ban.

Unfortunately, there is nothing like an overwhelming consensusof opinion to encourage a less than rigourous approach to analyzingcomplex ethical issues and their relationship to legislative proposals.And this is nowhere more apparent than in the discussion of humanreproductive cloning contained in the Andrews Report ("the Report"),«

2. Summary or the Findings or the CommitteeThe Committee formulated sixteen recommendations. They

included the following:The Committee unanimously concluded that there should be a

national legislative approach to these issues, and that theCommonwealth should take the lead. If the States and Territories arenot prepared to co-operate immediately in this project, the Committeewas of the opinion that the Commonwealth can and should use itsconstitutional powers to legislate to regulate human cloning andrelated research - see Recommendation One.

The Committee unanimously supported the use of existingembryonic stem cell lines to conduct research or to develop banks ofcell lines for future therapeutic use.s

The majority of the Committee concluded that the licensingbody proposed as part of the national approach should be permitted toissue a license for a person to use a surplus embryo from an assistedreproductive technology program (for example NF) for research ortherapy that damages or destroys the embryo, under certain strictconditions - see Recommendations Five and Six."

The minority submitted that research and therapy involving thefurther destruction of human embryos (that is, research that does notuse current stem cell lines or adult stem cells) was unethical andshould be prohibited. This was consistent with the position recentlyadopted by US President George W. Bush.

The Committee unanimously supported a national legislativeban on the deliberate creation of an embryo for research purposes aswell as any selling or trading in embryos, sperm or eggs - seeRecommendation Five.

The Committee unanimously approved an exception to thislegislative ban, in the form of a moratorium on therapeutic cloning.That is, it was decided that there should be a moratorium on thecreation of embryos by means of somatic cell nuclear transfer for non­reproductive purposes (that is, therapeutic cloning) for three years, atwhich time the issues should be re-examined - see RecommendationFive ."

The Committee unanimously proposed an absolute legislativeban on HRC. It further proposed that attempts to undertake HRCshould be made a criminal offence, and the license of the individualconcerned to undertake research should be revoked seeRecommendation Four.

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3. The Objectives of the CommitteeIt is important to emphasize that the Report does not confine

itself to collecting and summarizing community opinion on the issue ofhuman cloning and stem cell research. In addition to advising thegovernment on various factual scientific and legal issues, the Reportrecommends a legislative course of action based on its consideration ofthe ethical issues involved in human cloning and stem cell research.Indeed, Kevin Andrews MP designates this the central questionconfronting the members: "at the heart of these questions is whether itis ethical to conduct research involving cloning techniques... ",6

In the first chapter of the Report the two-fold structure of theCommittee's approach to ethical issues is made explicit. The Committeewrites that its approach throughout has been to canvass "the opinionsthat have come to its notice" and then to draw "its own conclusionsabout the issues involved in the processes and the oversight that maybe appropriate to their use."? Further, the Committee accepts some ofthe public criticism of the AHEC report, to the effect that it failed toadequately analyze and detail the ethical issues involved.s A number ofsubmissions made to the Andrews Committee criticise the AHEC reportfor this lack of analytical rigour and detailed deliberation, including StVincent's Hospital Sydney, the Queensland Bioethics Centre, and thePlunkett Centre for Ethics in Health Care.? The Committee concludesChapter Five by stating that it was "unfortunate" that the AHEC report"did not canvass in more detail the reasoning underpinning [its]discussion of the key ethical factors or its conclusions on thesematters."10

I will argue that the treatment of the ethics of HRC that theCommittee then goes on to provide is itself inadequate, and for just thereasons that are invoked against the AHEC report.

4. Summary of Objections to Chapter Six of the ReportFar from ameliorating the significant conceptual confusion that

surrounds HRC, the chapter devoted to the ethics of cloning forreproductive purposes:• fails to clearly detail the ethical reasoning underpinning its

conclusion;• fails to offer an rigourous analysis of the arguments against HRC

contained in the submissions made by the public;• fails to adequately describe and deal with arguments in support of

the ethically permissibility of HRC; and• fails to address clearly and explicitly the relationship between the

decision that HRC is ethically impermissible and therecommendation that it ought to be unconditionally legallyimpermissible.

It is important to note that these objections - if proven - standregardless of whether one thinks that the Committee ought to haveconcluded that HRC is ethically and legally permissible. It is alsoimportant to note that my objections are not premised on the

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expectation that Committees can or should produce reports with thesort of uniformity of reasoning that one expects from a piece of moralphilosophy.!' Indeed, in a pluralistic, liberal democracy - or a least ademocracy that leans towards liberalism - it is undesirable forlegislative proposals to select one particular moral tradition amongmany as providing the justification for that legislation.

Rather, my objection rests on the uncontroversial principle thatthose who advise the government and who wish to "inform the publicand contribute to the development of...community debate" have certainintellectual obligations.P They have the obligation to make not onlytheir conclusions but also their reasoning explicit, and to critically sizeup the merits of both the arguments for and against the issue at hand,no matter how unpopular certain arguments may be. Even where thereis an overwhelming consensus on an ethical issue, we are not bestserved by uncritically pointing to some unspecified elements of thatconsensus as the basis for legislation, particularly where criminalpenalties are involved. To deviate from this simple principle sets adangerous precedent, and not merely in relation to debates aboutreproductive and genetic technologies.

5. The Failure to Offer Transparent ReasoningChapter Six of the Report is devoted to a consideration of the

ethical issues raised by HRC. After having read the Report as a whole,the most striking thing about this chapter is that - unlike ChapterSeven which considers the ethics of research and therapy - there is nosection in which the Committee discusses the reasoning behind itsrecommendation that human cloning be considered impermissible.

Rather, the chapter abruptly jumps from a descriptive summaryof the arguments submitted by members of the public to a oneparagraph endorsement of the view that HRC is impermissible forreasons beyond the (possibly surmountable) safety problems associatedwith the technique.P One reads that the Committee strongly disagreeswith Dr David Swanton's view that safety issues are the only "sound,objective, non-discriminatory" basis on which to ethically condemnHRC, and that various members of the Committee accept various of theother grounds put forward by the public in their submissions.i4 Ineffect, our access to the Committee's reasoning in coming to theconclusion that HRC is unethical comes down to this one sentence:

It is clear that a concern about the safety of cloning forreproductive purposes is not the only ground on whichopposition to [HRC) may be based and this chapter has outlinedthose other arguments in detail. 15

This is plainly inadequate as an attempt to detail the reasoningunderpinning the Committee's recommendation on HRC. It does nottell us which of the arguments put by members of the public thevarious members of the Committee endorsed, let alone whether theyfound some arguments more persuasive than others and why.

In its descriptive summary, the Committee identifies seven maintypes of reasons offered in submissions from the public. The headings

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it uses to group these types are: no medical need for cloning forreproductive purposes, infringement of human dignity, the effect ofHRC on the family and personal relationships, considerations ofidentity and individuality, safety considerations, fear of eugenics andfor diversity, and the potential for coercion of women. I will saysomething about the absence of any critical analysis of these reasonsin the next section. What interests us here is that the Committee doesnot make clear to the public which of these reasons informed itsconclusion.

It is interesting to note that, in his introduction to the Report,Chair Andrews seems to narrow the grounds on which the Committeemade its decision. After having outlined the safety risks, he writes:"[m]ore importantly, the notion of 'photocopying' a human being iscontrary to human dignity, confuses family and personal relationshipsand offends many of the deepest understandings of our unique identityand individuality."16 However, not only is this an indirect and possiblyunreliable way to determine which arguments were endorsed by theCommittee as individuals or as a whole, it does nothing to resolveanother major problem: grouped together under the seven headings areincompatible arguments. To take one example, under the "identity andindividuality" heading some members of the public argue that HRCwould necessarily undermine individuality and identity, while othersargue that this rests on the (obviously false) assumption that theseattributes require a unique genome, and that the real harm to childrenwould flow from societal expectations.r? So which understanding of thecomposition of our unique identity and individuality does HRC offend,in the opinion of members of the Committee? As we shall we in the nextsection, the importance of the Committee identifying the particularreasoning behind its recommendation is not "merely" a matter oftransparency, it is also relevant because at least some of the argumentsput against allowing HRC are, arguably, flawed.

6. The Failure to Offer an Adequate Analysis ofArguments Against HRC

Closely related to this criticism of the Report is the claim that ­given the aims of the Report as set out by the Committee itself - itought to have contained a rigourous analysis of the anti-HRCarguments descriptively summarized in Chapter Six. As it is, thechapter is little more than a sociological description of the views ofAustralian individuals and organizations who have taken an interest inthe issue. This clearly does not constitute an answer to the questionwhich Kevin Andrews MP identified as the heart of the Committee'sconcerns, namely whether human cloning would be an ethical practice.

As previously noted, the Committee identifies seven main typesof reasons offered in submissions. Some of the arguments includedunder these headings are obviously problematic.w But let us assumethat these arguments are peripheral to the Committee's reasoning incoming to the conclusion that cloning for reproductive purposes would

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constitute an unethical act of the kind that requires legislativeprohibition. Let us further assume that at some future point scientistswill be able to overcome the safety objections to HRC. Of the remaininganti-HRC arguments, it is fair to say that two of the most commonlymade types of arguments focus on human dignity, and on the harmsthat will flow to a clone-child once born.

What follows is a sketch of some of the objections that havebeen made in reply to these two types of arguments. It is intended tothrow up a number of important points that need to be dealt with if onewants to adopt these types of arguments as grounds for proposinglegislation unconditionally banning HRC. It is not intended to be acomprehensive rebuttal of the many points made by members of thepublic in their submissions to the Committee.

In relation to arguments based on the claim that HRC wouldviolate human dignity, we should note that the (Kantian) moralimperative is not, as is commonly thought and is claimed in at leastone submission, that humans "may never be treated as a means to anend, but only as an end". Rather, it is that respect for human dignityentails that humans, unlike all other things in the world, may never betreated as a means only.19 This moral or categorical imperative doesnot, for example, prohibit us from having another child because one ofour motivations is to have a sibling for our existing child. It prohibitsus from treating that new child as though her only purpose is to satisfyour end of having a sister for little Johnny, and requires us to value herfor herself.

Certainly the prohibition on treating others as mere instrumentsfor our ends (on the grounds that it is a violation of human dignity)does not seem to prohibit a couple who - for example - both lackgametes using HRC to have a child that they intend to love andcherish.sv In this case, the child would be "valued or treated as worthyin herself' and would not be "treated as merely a means to somefurther end".21 The fact that some imagined uses of HRC may treat thechild as a means only is a reason to disallow these uses of thetechnology, in just the same way as some uses of other reproductivetechnologies are prohibited. If this leaves a very limited number ofpeople who would be eligible for access to HRC, this is a practical andnot an ethical matter, at least from a Kantian perapective.s?

Indeed, if we are concerned about using people as a means it isarguable that we should be concerned about the couples denied theusual liberty to reproduce on the basis of the well-worn "slippery slope"argument. Slippery slope arguments seek to ban something which initself may not be ethically impermissible, but which seems likely (it isclaimed) to lead to something that is impermissible. (It is interesting tonote that slippery slope arguments - along with the arguments that isit intrinsically wrong to "manufacture" humans and that IVF childrenwould be subject to social harms - were used in the attempt to ban IVFby bioethicists who today testify for US commissions and committeesthat HRC should be subject to an unconditional ban.s-] Because ofdifficulties of pinpointing the harm that flows from HRC - supposing

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that the safety issues were resolved - the slippery slope and itsspeculative harms are invoked to justify overriding the reproductiveliberty of couples who seek to have children who are not geneticallyrelated to anyone outside the couple (except possibly mitochondrially),but who are unable to do so without HRC.24 It is at least arguable thatan unconditional prohibition does not represent the best balancebetween the liberty to reproduce and fears about possible future policydecisions in relation to reproductive technologies. This in point inparticular needed to be critically addressed by the Committee.

Moving on to the claim that the harms that would flow to aclone-child once born justify an unconditional legislative prohibition,again there are some clear objections. Once again (assuming that thesafety issues can be resolved) it is difficult to see what harms wouldflow to a child as a result of being a clone that would justify passinglegislation which would prevent him ever having existed. Here we touchupon a complex metaphysical issue: does it make sense to claim thatwe ought to prevent someone's existence in order to prevent him frombeing harmed? This is what John Robertson calls the problem ofwrongful life.w It is basically this: that unless the child born has a lifeso full of pain and suffering that her interests would be best served bynon-existence, it seems incoherent to claim one does a wrong to thatchild by bringing her into existence. This is because this claim seems topresuppose that one could have brought that particular child intoexistence in some other way that did not involve the harm. This doesseem to hold in relation to damaging events that occur duringpregnancy and birth. It does not seem to apply to cases where theembryo from which the child developed would never have come intoexistence without the use of some reproductive technology.w Perhapsone can get round this problem in the way that Derek Parfit and DanBrock propose, namely by talking in terms of the class of children as awhole - or perhaps not.27 In any case, it is a significant if not intuitivelyaccessible objection to the claim that we ought to protect the child bybanning certain methods of procreation.

There is also another, much simpler form of objection to theclaim that we ought to protect the child by banning certain forms ofprocreation. In support of the claim that HRC would damage a child'sidentity and individuality, Nicholas Tonti-Filippini submitted to theCommittee that "cultural genetic determinism" would create(presumably damaging) societal expectations.w Unfortunately, humansocieties are all too familiar with the detrimental effects of culturalgenetic determinism, given the central role it plays in racism andsexism. We know that in some societies, and even in some parts of ourown society, children of certain racial backgrounds, or of mixed racecan suffer social discrimination, and psychological and physicalattacks. However, few people would say that it was unethical of theparents of those children to have created them, and even fewer thatthere should be a piece of legislation that criminally penalizes mixedrace couples who do have children, on the grounds that the decision todo so harms their offspring by exposing them to an unkind and

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ignorant society.If it is objected that these cases are not analogous to the use of

cloning technology because the latter would be an assisted form ofreproduction (and that this makes a moral difference), we are still leftwith the analogy between HRC and IVF. During the IVF debateprominent commentator Jeremy Rifkin claimed that there would beharmful "psychological implications of growing up as aspecimen.. .belonging to no one but the lab technician who joinedtogether sperm and egg", and asked "[i]n a world already populatedwith people with identity crises, what's the person identity of a test­tube baby?"29 Twenty-five years later, the public is better educatedabout "test-tube babies", the media attention directed at them haslargely evaporated, and there does not seem to be any persuasiveevidence that the thousands of children born through IVF have sufferedto any great extent from identity crises. But even though there wastremendous social attention focused on Louise Brown and others, andeven if IVF children do have some problems dealing with their unusualcreation, if they had an otherwise ordinarily happy life would thisjustify banning IVF? It seems not, and it seems that a similar argumentcould be made for the children who would be the product of HRC. Asfor parents themselves having stronger expectations that their clone­child will follow a pre-determined path, this is arguably an issue bestsolved by better education and responsible screening of candidatesthan by a complete ban.

7. The Failure to Adequately Deal with Arguments inSupport of HRC

The flip -side of the Committee's failure to analyze thearguments presented in submissions in support of an unconditionalban on HRC is their failure to properly detail or reply to arguments insupport of allowing at least some cases of HRC . Even if the descriptivesummary of the "one or two" people who expressed support for HRC isaccurate, in drawing its own conclusions about the matter theCommittee had an obligation to go beyond these submissions toconsider the highest quality arguments put by those who supportallowing HRC in some cases.w This is not an unreasonable expectation,given that the Committee was under an obligation to consider theethics of human cloning, and not simply to offer a summary of theopinions of the Australian public on the issue. It is also notunreasonable given that the Committee does use "outside"philosophical sources in its ethical reasoning in at least one other placein the Report.> '

In relation to the arguments in defense of HRC, the Committeeneeded to go beyond stating that it was "aware that arguments insupport of [HRC] have gained some currency overseas" and that in "theUnited States, for example, some have argued that to prohibit [HRC]would infringe reproductive freedom't.V A number of well-knownAustralian and American philosophers make the claim that prohibiting

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all instances of HRC would be an unjustified infringement on:reproductive liberty, or that any harms that would flow from (ascientifically improved, risk-reduced) HRC are not sufficient to justifyprohibiting all access to the technology.P John Robertson, for example,made the reproductive liberty argument in his testimony before the USNational Bioethics Advisory Committee.e! Again, the suggestion here isnot that the Committee should have accepted all of Robertson'sarguments or other arguments for the conclusion that a risk-reducedHRC is morally permissible and ought to be legally permissible. Ratherit is simply that the Committee should have outlined and explicitlydealt with such arguments.

8. The Failure to Differentiate Ethical and LegalImpermissibility

In reaching the conclusion that HRC ought to be subject to anunconditional legislative ban, the Committee does not address thecentral issue of the relationship between finding that an act would beunethical, and the decision to legislate against it.

It is widely accepted that the justification for legislating against aparticular act - particularly where criminal penalties are involved ­requires more than the conclusion that the act would be unethical. ThePlunkett Centre made just this point in their submission to theCommittee on the AHEC report: "From the fact that something isreasonably judged to be unethical, it does not follow that it ought to besubject to legal prohibition."35

In a liberal democracy it is a necessary condition for an ethicaljudgement to be legitimately used as the basis for a legislativeprohibition that the act must be unethical when considered from whatPhilip Petit, in his submission to the inquiry, called "ecumenicalethics".36 Basically, this is John Rawls' point that a liberal democracyshould avoid political decision-making that depends for its justificationupon controversial claims about the essential nature of persons.P? Heargues that the deep metaphysical and ethical disagreementscharacteristic of post-Reformation Western societies entails that the"search for truth about an independent metaphysical and moral ordercannot...provide a workable and shared basis for a political conceptionof justice in a democratic society."38

Rather, we need to support a conception of justice that derivesfrom an overlapping consensus between "goodwilled, clear headed"people with different metaphysical and moral beliefs.e? Importantly,this does not mean that when the government is considering particularissues, it should simply fall into line with the consensus opinion. Thisis because part of the larger overlapping consensus in Western liberaldemocracies is that justice requires that people should be accordedcertain rights, both liberty or negative rights and entitlement or positiverights. Thus, even if there is an overwhelming consensus that aparticular person should, for example, be released to the mob rather

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than given a fair trial this would not suffice to legitimate that action.This is why a sustained discussion of the arguments around

reproductive liberty are crucial to any decision to prohibit access to aparticular reproductive technology, even where there is anoverwhelming consensus about the ethical impermissibility of HRC. Ifwe believe that at least competent adults have a liberty right toreproduce - that is, a right to be free from governmental interference intheir reproductive lives - then it is necessary to adduce strong,pluralist reasons to explain why this liberty right does not extend toself-funded access to medically safe reproductive technologies.

Of course, it could be objected that the tradition of "takingrights seriously", to use Ronald Dworkin's famous formulation, isstronger in the United States than it is in Australia. It is true that ourpolitical tradition combines liberal elements with a morecommunitarian approach to good governance. Australians as a group,as opposed to Americans as a group, think it appropriate to both expectmore of our government in terms of social services and to accept moregovernmental restrictions on our liberty.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in relation to reproductivetechnologies. In Australia, it is widely accepted that where peoplerequire medical assistance to reproduce, the government shouldprovide partial resources, and can legitimately restrict access to thattechnology to particular classes of persons. The controversy arises overthe exclusion of some of those classes of persons - even where theymay be prepared to self-fund their use of the technology - and thereasons given for their exclusion.

However, even in society that combines some elements ofliberalism and communitarianism, it is essential to recognise thatwhere the government seeks to prohibit the access of its citizens to areproductive technology (once it has been shown to be safe) it is underan obligation to provide the public with not only clear reasons for thisdecision, but also clearly articulated reasons that are powerful enoughand "ecumenical" enough to justify denying people the chance to havechildren that have a minimal genetic connection to people outside theirrelationship. It may be possible to provide these sorts of reasons in thecase of HRC, over and above the potentially resolvable safety issue. Theclaim here is simply that the Andrews Report does not so provide.

9. ConclusionWhile the Report may well fulfil the first half of its ethical

project in relation to HRC - namely the empirical task of adequatelysummarizing and categorizing the various submissions to theCommittee on the subject - it is clearly inadequate as a discussion ofthe permissibility or impermissibility of that practice.

The resources available to the general public to assist inameliorating confusion about human cloning are not vast. Mediatreatments of the issue are often sensationalist or unhelpfully brief,while essays in philosophical, bioethical and legal publications areinaccessible to most. Especially in this situation, both interested

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members of the public and parliamentarians may reasonably expectthat parliamentary reports will strive to clarify the arguments for andagainst allowing human cloning - including human reproductivecloning - and to reach clearly and soundly reasoned recommendations.

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By human reproductive cloning I mean the process of using somatic cell nucleartransfer to create an embryo for the purposes of implanting it in woman's wombwith the hope that it will result in the birth of a child. By therapeutic cloning Imean the use of somatic cell nuclear transfer to produce embryos, not forreproductive purposes, but to be used in the development of human stem cells,tissues and organs.House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs2001, Human cloning: scientific, ethical and regulatory aspects ofhuman cloning andstem cell research, Canberra, The Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia.http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/laca/humancloning/report.pdfNote however paragraph 7.115, which states that the minority members of theCommittee "also have concerns about the continued use of embryonic stem cellsthat have been derived from embryos, whether in Australia or overseas." (ibid, p.121 - italics added) The reader is then instructed to see paragraph 7.124 for furtherdetails. However if we interpret 7.155 as relating to existing stem cell lines, 7 .124 isunhelpful as it makes no further remarks on that subject. (ibid, pp .124)The Committee was made up of ten members. The majority was made up of sixmembers of Parliament: Nicola Roxon, Bruce Billson , Alan Griffin, Duncan Kerrand Stuart St Clair . In the minority were the chair, Kevin Andrews, Alan Cadman,John Murray and Danna Vale.The minority, who rejected the use of embryos in research as unethical,nonetheless agreed that if this use of embryos was to be permitted, it should besubject to the regulatory regime provided in the report. (House of Representatives,op cit, 12.3, p. 218) As for the reasoning behind the moratorium, we are given alist of three arguments which one or more (unspecified) members of the Committeesupported. The second of these arguments appears to absolutely reject thepossibility that therapeutic cloning could become permissible. (ibid, 7.119, p . 122)ibid, p. x.ibid, 1.7, p. 2ibid, 5.30, p. 71.ibid, 5.18-5.28, pp.70-71.ibid, 5.30, p. 72Just as there is a diversity of opinion amongst the public and within the Committeeabout therapeutic cloning, there were also a number of different reasons("encompassing ethical, medical, legal and / or social considerations") motivatingthe Committee's rejection ofHRC. (ibid, 7 .107, p . 118; 6.72, p .92)ibid, p. xxii.ibid, 6 .69, p. 91.ibid, 6.69-6.72, pp. 91-2.ibid, 6.69, p. 91.ibid , p. x.ibid, 6.47-6.50, pp .86-8. Here I refer to the mistaken view that genetic uniquenessis a prerequisite for individuality and autonomy. For a discussion of this view, seePatrick D. Hopkins 1998, "Bad Copies: How Popular Media Represent Cloning as anEthical Problem" , Hastings Center Report, vo1.28(2), pp .6-9.I have already mentioned the clearly mistaken view that HRC would necessarilyundermine individuality and identity, which is countered in another submissionsummarized in the Report, but not directly by the Committee itself. (ibid, 6.50 , p.

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87) There is also the odd view that allowing HRC would somehow lead to womenbeing coerced into supplying ova and gestating clone foetuses, as though allowingHRC would not only create an enormous demand for the procedure, it would alsolead to the evaporation of legal and moral prohibitions against such coercion. (ibid,6.63, p. 90) This argument is not rebutted by any submission summarized inChapter Six, nor - again - is it addressed by the Committee itself.Kant, Immanuel 1948, The Moral Law: Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals,trans. H. J. Paton, Routledge, London and New York, p. 429.One of arguments given in submissions to the Committee is that there is nomedical need for cloning for reproductive purposes. (ibid, 6.21-6.24, p. 78 -79) AlanTrounson goes so far as to claim that "you would have to say that [HRC) is forselfish reasons. You want to replace a child who died or , for some other reason, youwant to see yourself as a cloned individual." (ibid, 6.22, p.79) With respect, this isnot at all clear. As John Robertson and Judith Thompson both point out, there aresituations in which couples carmot physically have a child that contains onlygenetic material (or non-mitochondrial genetic material) from within that couple,without the use of HRC. (John A. Robertson, 1998, "Liberty, Identity, and HumanCloning", Texas Law Review, vol. 76(6), May, pp . 1379-80; Judith Thompson 2000,"Legal and Ethical Problems of Human Cloning", Journal of Law and Medicine,vol.8, Aug., pp. 31-43)House of Representatives, op cit, 6.34, p .82 .Ifgovernment funding were involved, the very small number of people who would beeligible for HRC, in combination with the huge expense of making safe and usingthe technique, would of course suffice to make HRC an ethical issue from aresource allocation perspective.The obvious example is Leon Kass. A conservative neo-Aristotelian and staunchopponent of reproductive technologies, Kass has recently been appointed thechairman of President Bush's new Council on Bioethics, and has testified againstallowing any form of cloning (therapeutic or reproductive) to take place in the US.(see Kass, Leon 2001b, "Prepared Witness Testimony', The Committee on Energyand Commerce, Subcommittee on Health, H.R. 1644, Human Cloning Act of 2001,and H.R., Cloning Prohibition Act of 2001, June 20 .) Kass's work was quoted byseveral submissions to the Andrews Committee and cited in the AHEC Report.(House of Representatives, op cit, 6.44, p. 85) In a 1971 article, Kass condemnsboth IVF and HRC as violating "the distinction between the natural and theartificial, and at its very root, the nature of man himself (Kass , Leon 1971 , "MakingBabies - the New Biology and the 'Old' Morality", The Public Interest , vol. 26, pp .18­57)see for example - House of Representatives, op cit, 6 .33 , p . 82.Robertson notes that tort law in the US has "almost universally rejected claims ofwrongful life based on the birth of a child who could not have existed but with thecondition of concern: (Robertson, op cit, p . 1406)Another, more legalistic way to explain the problem is this: one cannot cause harmto someone by bringing them into existence because the "but for" test is notsatisfied. For the test to be satisfied, it must be the case that if you had notperformed the relevant act (in this case bringing another into existence) the otherperson would not have been harmed in the way they were harmed. But in this case,if you had not performed the relevant act, there would have been no person to existunharmed by your action.Robertson, op cit, pp . 1406-7.House of Representatives, op cit, 6.50, p. 87.Rifkin quoted in Gregory E. Pence 1998, Who's Afraid ofHuman Cloning?, LanhamMaryland, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.House of Representatives, op cit, 6.67 , p. 91.In the minority discussion of the issue of the destruction of human embryos fortherapeutic research, a long quote from a submission to the US Congressional

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hearings by anti-cloning philosopher Jean Bethke Elshtain is given in support ofthe minority position. (House of Representatives, op cit , 7 .114, p . 121)House of Representatives, 6.65, op cit, p. 91.See for example Michael Tooley 1998, "The moral status of the cloning of humans",in JM Humber et al. (eds) Human Cloning, Humana Press; Gregory Pence, op cit;and Peter Singer 200 I, "Let the doctor clone humans - if he can", The Age, 5 th Feb.John A. Robertson 1998, "Liberty, Identity, and Human Cloning", Texas LawReview, vol. 76(6) , May, pp . 1371-1456; John A. Robertson 1998, "Human Cloningand the Challenge of Regulation", The New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 339,Jul. 9, pp. 119-22.House of Representatives, op cit, 5.24, p. 70 .Petit is quoted in the Report on this point. However, his contribution does not makean appearance in the Chapter Six discussion of HRC. Rather it appears in theChapter Seven discussion of therapeutic cloning and stem cell research. (ibid, 7.12,p.96)Rawls, John 1985, "Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical", Philosophy andPublic Affairs, vo1.l4(3), pp. 223.ibid, p . 230.Petit quoted in the Report, House of Representatives, op cit, 7.12, p .96; Rawls opcit, p . 225.