Thinking Twice: Cloning and In Vitro Fertilization.

• Author: Watt, Helen
• Position: Abstracts

Helen Watt, Thinking Twice: Cloning and In Vitro Fertilization, 18 ETHICS & MED. 35 (2002).

Human cloning and in vitro fertilization are regarded as very different procedures. IVF is seen as a mainstream procedure raising few ethical problems, while cloning, or "reproductive" cloning, is widely regarded as beyond the moral pale. One very basic feature is shared by IVF (among other procedures) and cloning, is that the child is the outcome of an act of production: an act, which bears a close resemblance to manufacturing. To produce a living human being as if it were an artifact, by controlling raw materials, creates a situation in which the it is liable to be treated as an artifact thereafter. In contrast, sexual procreation by those who are committed to each other and to the nurture of new lives has its own symbolic content: that of interpersonal giving and receiving. An act with this symbolic content is more appropriate to human generation and will help the couple to respect as a person any child who may result.

In IVF the "producer" mentality can be seen in the way in which IVF embryos are, in practice, dealt with by parents and clinicians. These living human embryos are mass-produced, screened, discarded, used in experiments and so on; in short, they are treated as products or possessions under our technological control. Such de facto expressions of the producer mentality are sometimes confirmed by explicit statements on the part of IVF patients. For example, one study found that over 90% of IVF patients regarded their...