Cloning, abortion, and legal identity Steve asked some interesting questions in the comments on the Raelian cloning story, and I'm replying here to get a little more room. First, my challenge:
The Raelians successfully create a clone and keep it alive throughout a normal gestation. Then, prior to birth, they pith the clone, removing all higher brain functions. Since this is done prior to birth, under current law there would be no murder, as a person is not a person until his head passes through the birth canal.They then allow the clone to be born, keep it alive for ten to fifteen years, then transplant the original person's brain into the cloned body.Since the clone never had it's own identity, and it's DNA is identical to the donor, we have a situation which is analogous to an autologous blood transfusion.
Is this a problem?
If so, at what point does the system break down?
His response:
Rich, what's the cloning analog to passing through the birth canal (here we have the cloned embryo in a fetus, but suppose we use some kind of, oh, "mock womb" which would seem likely for large scale production of clones)? And where does that leave those born by c-section? Further, in your scenario the cloned body has, in effect been aborted - what justification is there for reversing its staus once you cram another personality into it?
First, I was using current technology, since we apparently have a clone growing right now, if the Raelians are to be believed. In this case, standard precedents apply, and identity occurs upon live birth, specifically, with the passage of the head from the mother's body. This is derived from the practice of dilation and extraction, where the fetus is turned in the womb, extracted feet first until the shouldres are free. Then the skull is punctured and the brain destroyed. At this point, the destroyed fetus is completely extracted. In the case of a c-section, it follows that when the fetus's head is removed from the incision, identity is assigned.
Using a mock womb introduces a new aspect to the problem, but by extension, we can argue that when the skull is decanted the clone, or any in-vitro fetus, would be assigned an identity.
As for the final question, while the fetus was aborted, the tissues remain viable. We already harvest fetal tissues for transplantation; it is merely a question of degree. If it is OK to take some cells, isn't it OK to take an organ? If we can take an organ, why not several organs? What is the difference between taking cells and culturing them to increase their usefulness and taking the cloned fetus and allowing it to grow, to increase it's usefulness? The question of identity is easily handled. Identity is centered in the brain, and therefore transfers with the brain. There is no reversal of status; the cloned body never had any status to reverse. The original maintains his identity. It would be more accurate to say that the original had a whole body transplant, instead of a brain transplant.
I'm not a lawyer, or a biologist, but it certainly seems to me that the above scenario is simply a logical extension of current laws and precedents. In fact, I would go as far as to say that any other scenario would require a break with established precedents.
Posted by Rich at August 1, 2002 2:17 AM