This guest post is courtesy of Nicholas Hasenbalg, Regent Law 2L:
When replicating something, such as a cookie recipe, one would want to create it without defects. You want to make it as it is intended before trying to replicate the procedure. For example, try a batch with brown sugar instead of natural cane sugar to see what tastes the best. Alternatively, you could employ a method of creating a copy with minor differences to arrive at an ideal conclusion, switching recipes after trying a batch. Then, once you have the perfect cookie, you repeat the process and call it your famous personal recipe, innocently baked in a college student's dorm room oven.
That type of layman's level scientific method of calculation sounds great when thinking about flowers, sugar, chocolate, and other ingredients. However, when your ingredients are gametes of a sperm, egg, and uterus, and the basic building blocks of DNA that make up a human being, that calculation seems far colder and more horrific. It suddenly matters who the chief is in the case of parentage, or who is the proverbial oven in the case of surrogacy, and most importantly, what happens to the unbaked embryo. Wouldn't we give more weight to having cloned embryos than we would to freezing a perfect cookie recipe to share with others, only to then bake it in their ovens?
The clearest risk here is that you can, instead of having multiple unique
children born by the mother impregnated through natural means, implant an egg
with the father's sperm, clone the resulting embryo, freeze it, then implant
that cloned "perfect child" into someone more physically capable of
having the child. Alternatively, worse, selling the cloned embryo to a
surrogate mother who has the child so she (who may not have healthy eggs but
can carry and give birth to the child) can have a genetically perfect child
when born.
In the Hitchhiker's
Guide to ART, it is made clear to me that mix-ups are not
uncommon in these medical facilities that engage in assisted reproductive
technology, well, when you significantly increase the amount of embryos via
cloning, this statistical risk of transplanting instead of a unique child, you
get a child that is not only not the one you intended to have, but one who has
an identical genetic clone of itself both in labs and probably born and walking
around somewhere else. A clear example is the New York case, Perry Rogers v. Fasano,
where the child born was not of the same race as the intended parents. To
prevent this in cloning, states should have a clear consent-based contract or
restrict cloning of their ART embryos to prevent further embryo discarding or
scientific experimentation on embryos. An argument can be made for the
potential scientific advancement, but I have a moral objection to such
experimentation.
The article also highlights that these issues have a profound ripple effect on families, as they impact not only the child but also their siblings, friends, future spouses, and future children. For each of these groups, there are personal, emotional, social, financial, and physical concerns. Personally, being part of a family with two sets of twins on my mom's side, I have a very wholesome and complex relationship with people who are so similar genetically, even if it is not by natural means. If you include someone who is not genetically unsuitable in the same family, it can create massive emotional ripple effects for the entire family. Cloning consent forms should not be signed by the genetic donors alone. Still, they should be expanded to include related family members or any children born, and should be made aware of the potential consequences of having another one of themselves created.
Exploitation and degradation of women in the Surrogacy industry to make infants objects and children commodities is made more apparent when you include the embryo being implanted being genetically identical to another embryo. It increases the commodification from the simple concept of a surrogate birthing a unique child to a world where an identical child was requested because another clone was asked, and that surrogate birthed them just fine.
All of these issues arise due to a lack of legal guidelines that cannot keep pace with the profound and rapidly advancing scientific developments. Certain states, such as Louisiana, have defined what an embryo is and its rights, which could be expanded to include the rights of a cloned embryo in comparison to a non-cloned embryo. However, states like Oregon have contract law control, which, when thinking about the scientific use of clones, would create a fearfully palatable world where adoptive parents of the US government decide they want to patent a genetic super soldier, preventing adoptive parents from suing for their now adoptive kids' likeness being everywhere, causing violence on behalf of our government.
In conclusion, regardless of the state, the lack of
guidelines in a rapidly developing scientific field should be a
concern for legislators, who should improve and implement laws based on those
established by other states that have addressed the issue. The legal system
should begin to address this issue, regardless of who currently has the most
well-developed regulations surrounding ART issues, when addressing cloning, to
prevent major morally grey lawsuits from reaching court first, and to help restore and strengthen families.
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