Imagine that the technology exists to clone a human being.

Imagine further that the genes of Albert Einstein are reproduced in a human clone.

Imagine you are that clone.

You will not, of course, "be" Albert Einstein. Your personality, life course and career will have no necessary relation to that of your forebear. One cannot clone time—which is unique for each human being. But it is not enough to say you will be who you are regardless of your genes—any more than we are who we are regardless of our parents. Your genetic history will not be a matter of indifference to you. There will be physical and other, unpredictable, similarities, and powerful societal expectations. Reasonable or not, such expectations—and your own, of course, as well—will have real effects on you.

How will you respond?

Will you wish this experiment had never been undertaken? Or, will you be "happy?"

Will you wish to make society glad for creating you? Or—will you wish to punish your creators for putting you in an impossible position?

How will the fact you’ve been "chosen" affect you? Will it endow you with a graceful humility? Or, will it make you feel "born better" than others and entitled to special treatment: a "spoiled brat"—or worse?

Will you be a "responsible member of society" or an irresponsible and cruel one?

The very fact that the questions above do not permit of any single definitive answer is itself illuminating. Good and evil cannot be predetermined by the success of any scientific technique. What can be predicted is a considerable stake in the outcome. The society that conducts such an experiment may be compared to a man who goes to a casino and bets a little more than he can afford. He may, indeed, bet more than he even has. What, then, if he loses?

The problem with most arguments over human cloning is a lack of a realistic assessment of the possible risks and rewards. Guardians of the status quo refer to grave risks which have no likelihood of coming to pass. Those in favor of moving forward offer either rewards of minuscule value, or place blind faith in the ability of science to perform wonders. Blind faith is no substitute for rational argument, and even if it proves justified, we may not welcome the results. Have we learned nothing from the cataclysms following on a 20th century of progress that may yet be the end of us?

Sentor Tom Harkin apparently has not. "Human cloning will take place, and it will take place within my lifetime, and I don’t fear it at all. I welcome it," Harkin said. "I think it is right and proper. It holds untold benefits for humankind in the future." New York Daily News, 3/13/97. This is not a view in which I can take much comfort. For if Senator Harkin is correct, and human cloning holds power to confer benefits, it will also hold power to visit destruction.

Like the tapping of atomic power, your creation (as all great scientific experiments) contains the ambivalent potential for violence—violence that either heals or destroys. If you turn out well, fine. If not—the consequences could range far beyond the unpleasant.

What could be violent about cloning? Cardinal O’Connor, testified before the N.Y. State Assembly and raised the specter of an "army of clones." He told lawmakers "the most fundamental change is that you could have something, whatever you are going to call it, without any parentage, without any social context, without anyone assuming responsibility or accountability."

This argument is deceptive. It pretends to be against cloning—what it really criticizes is the (non-existent) possibility of mechanical incubation. (That this is what is intended is affirmed by the Vatican newspaper, which said in an editorial that people "have the right to be born in a human way and not in a laboratory.") The church, of course, has the most powerful political investment in obscuring the distinction between conception and birth. By the Church’s lights, only the Church can interfere in sexual processes.

There are undoubtedly good reasons for this position, constituting as it does a first line of defense in the battle for the soul of man. But an argument based on willful blindness, as one on blind faith, is vulnerable. It can never persuade; instead it merely plants the seed of doubt in those who might otherwise be sympathetic. As long as women will have to bear clones to term—likely yet for the foreseeable future—there need be no fear that each clone will not also be an individual. They will be loved and cherished (or not) just like every other human being.

Thus, we need have no fear of an "army of clones." Clones would be no more inclined to join an army than any other human being! (Indeed, probably less likely than most.)

Another red herring is the idea that evil can be bred. Elizabeth Connolly (D.-S.I.) was quoted as saying "you could have evil forces who would be developing human beings who are evil by nature." (New York Daily News, 2/27/97.)1 The ignorance of the human psyche displayed here is as profound as it is appalling. Nobody ever thinks they are evil! It is always the others! A further irony is apparent as well. A deeply materialistic viewpoint is expressed in the guise of a spiritual one. If good or evil is in our genes, what use to us is religion?

If, on the other hand, we were to say that clones are human beings who are extreme by nature, for either good or ill, we would be hewing much closer to the truth, and to the real risks and rewards of cloning. It is in this sense that cloning is itself violence—no matter the end to which it is turned. Cloning is violence because it is a form of copying behavior, which tends to violent extremes. Indeed, once we understand the importance of copying behavior, we also understand the great attraction and supreme risk of human cloning.

Copying behavior plays a central role in human life. The aggressive instinct expresses itself in two diametrically opposed and reversible ways—in the desire to be like others and the desire to be unique. (Or, the desire to copy and the desire to be copied.) Our survival as individuals and as society depends on all of us striving to maintain a balance between these two apparently incompatible expressions of the drive. All violence can be traced to a failure of one kind or another in such mimetic processes.

One quite common source of difficulty is the powerful mimetic forces at work in the relation of parent and child. The ubiquity of violent enforcement of conformity (of which the daily papers overflow with examples), the self-destructive efforts to distance oneself from the parental example (on which the livelihoods of so many intelligent and compassionate professionals depend) testifies to the dangers inherent in the relationship.

In this context we must view the risk of your creation (Einstein’s clone) for bringing about personal and social disintegration. For these mimetic forces will be multiplied 100-fold in you. Not only will you have to deal with your genetic duplication of a famous forebear, but also with the fact you are different from everybody else. The social pressures on you will be enormous. Who could possibly be equipped to handle them? (Professor Einstein himself was no marvel of personal integration, despite his intelligence.) Will you succumb to depression, or alcoholism; will you escape to the mountains? Will you escape into madness or violence? What conceivable gain to science could be worth this personal risk to you? The only possible positive outcome is that you prove a model of goodness. That may be a benefit to society, but not to you personally! (Models of goodness, remember, are not renowned for their long life spans.)

Making many Einstein clones would not improve matters in the least. If that were to occur, we could safely discount the possibility that any good would come of the experiment.2 On the other hand, the efforts of the clones to distinguish themselves one from another could easily envelope society in violence.

The ancient prerogative of religion was to induce faith by placing us at risk. God was the source, not only of all benefits, but of all that was destructive. By yielding up his violence to god, man attained a kind of peace. Now we are in a later age where we no longer believe in gods; we believe, instead, in science. Science holds us in thrall with its awesome power for good and evil. Sometimes we forget the evil part; but science is ever like the levee on the river, which holds back three floods and multiplies the power of the fourth 50-fold. Some day, possibly soon, scientists will find in the power of human cloning an overwhelming attraction. Once that happens, no argument against it will be able to prevail. For them, it will be a way of placing humanity at risk for gain no more substantial than the supposed "glory of Science." In their minds, it will be enough.

I hope I’m not here to see it.

Endnotes

1. This idea is consistent with the naive scientific view that evil will be found to result from a neurotransmitter imbalance. That the experiments needed to prove such a hypothesis are themselves evil is a thought that occurs to no one!