Laws
There is an enormous gap in the level of oversight and regulation of human cloning from one country to the next. Sadly, the United States, for all its resources and technological advances, lags far behind the global community in establishing guidelines over such a powerful and potentially lifechanging piece of knowledge. And not just one person's life or a small group of individuals, but life as we know it on this planet. This seems a tall enough order to require a good dose of legal regulation and government oversight; however, the U.S. government's involvement in the governing of this technology ranks on the same level as third world countries and rogue terroristic nations in some of the most unadvanced and uncooperative regions of the world. How can this be? In an article from Science Progress (Hayes) investigating the glaring differences in the regulation of human biotechnologies around the world, the author states, "In the United States serious discussion of this question has been thwarted for the past eight years by partisanship and polarization, and constructive engagement by the Bush administration at the international level has been effectively nil."
There are many other countries that have realized the need for a "middle ground" approach to these issues, and the vast majority of technologically advanced countries, belonging to such international governing groups as the United Nations, UNESCO, World Health Organization, the European Union, etc... have adopted stringent guidelines that must be followed by experimenters in this field. Hayes also states in the same article, "The human biotechnologies have the potential for both great good and great bad... If we are to realize their benefits, yet avoid their risks we will need regulations, laws and guidelines at both national and international levels." It does little good to have a majority of the technologically advanced countries around the world implement strict laws and firm oversight, if a handful of countries are willing to allow the practice of human cloning with no strictures whatsoever. Therefore a firm stand by the global community at large must be taken, if we wish to explore the myriad benefits that can be realized through this technology and if we wish to continue to engage in life as we know it on this planet.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, as of December 2008, only fifteen states have implemented any laws or regulations, with potential sanctions, pertaining to human cloning. Of these fifteen, all of the states expressly prohibit the use of cloning for reproductive purposes, while only six of them prohibit therapeutic cloning (while Virginia's laws are somewhat ambiguous as to the definition of an embryo in relation to it's use in human cloning). However, the regulations of such a potentially world-changing technology needs to be addressed at the international level. If the U.S., in all her power and resources, has only fifteen out of fifty states that have even approached the issue of human cloning, then that leaves too many researchers, labs, and private entities with the oppotunity to use this technology for ignomious purposes. An article on Reuters Website, reports that the United Nations has called for "a legally binding global ban on work to create a human clone, coupled with freedom for nations to permit strictly controlled therapeutic research", which they believe, "has the greatest political viability of options available."
"Almost all governments oppose human cloning and more than 50 have legislation outlawing reproductive cloning," according to the Reuters article on the U.N.'s report on cloning. While it is generally agreed that therapeutic cloning may hold vast benefits for the human race at large, the core of this debate centers around the implications that come with the accomplishment of reproductive cloning. The complications that could arise if a already existent person were to be cloned are unimaginable, even beyond the issues of medical complications and reproductive viability. If a person has a clone and that clone is unidentifiable from the original DNA used in their creation, then the possiblity of violent crimes being blamed on the original source exists, not to mention inheritence and other aspects of estate law which would then come open for debate in a legal setting. Would not a clone be a "twin" to some degree of the original person? How do we protect the rights of both the original person and the cloned one? How do we protect against discrimination against cloned individuals? Who will be held responsible for the raising, training, education and medical care of a cloned individual, not to mention moral development, social support, and spiritual guidance? While these questions may seem philosophical and far-fetched today, depending on the speed of advancement in this technology, they may be entirely reasonable and viable tomorrow.
written by Amy Dague