Comment
Dying to live
The Raelians say that by
cloning ourselves we could live for ever. But who on earth would want to do
that?
Giles
Fraser
The
Guardian
Beneath the question of whether a nutty sect has actually cloned a baby lies the more interesting question of why it wants to.
"The goal is to give humans eternal life through cloning," say the
Raelians. It is supposed to work like this: you make a clone copy of me and
then "download" my personality into the clone. The clone thus becomes
a revitalised version of me. And you can keep on doing this, making copies of
the copy, ad infinitum. Hence I live forever.
The reason this is
rubbish has nothing to do with the capabilities of science. It's rather a
question of what makes me me - what philosophers call the question of personal
identity. The Raelians presume that an accurate copy of me, a copy that shares
the same DNA, is the same thing as me. But it just isn't.
Part of the dodge that
makes the cloning idea look half plausible is that we are led to imagine the
clone taking on the parent's downloaded personality at the time of the parent's
death. In this way the parent and the clone are not thought of together in the
same space, but rather as one succeeding the other, the "I" being
handed down the generations. But what if we imagine the
parent's personality being downloaded into a clone, or even multiple clones,
which then live alongside the parent. Can we really make sense of the
idea that there are actually half a dozen people, all living at the same time,
all of whom are really me? We don't treat identical twins as one person, so why
should we treat my identical clone and me as one person?
One of the ways we can
test whether it is nonsense to speak of clones with identical downloaded
personalities as being the same person as the originating self is when we think
about questions of responsibility.
Imagine, after I die, it
is discovered that I had committed a terrible murder. Would my clone then be
responsible? Would it be right to send him to prison? At the trial my clone
would protest that it wasn't him but his parent who committed the crime. And he
would be right - the conclusion of which is that whatever the physical and
psychological similarities between clone and parent, the two can never be the
same person. If this is the case then there can be no eternal life through
cloning; simply, at best, a succession of different people who happen to look
and behave the same way as me. What a nightmare.
But even if it were
possible to live forever, would we really want to? And would human life really
be as valuable if we were able to do away with the limits that define it?
American philosopher Martha Nussbaum makes the point that it is the limitations
of being human, in particular the limitation of our mortality, that gives
meaning to what we are and much that we value. Indeed, a life that is without
the possibility of death seems altogether more shallow
in comparison.
In classical literature
much is made of gods who fall in love with mortals. The beautiful goddess
Calypso offers Odysseus a life on her island free from ageing and death. But
rather than accept her offer of immortality Odysseus chooses to continue his
dangerous journey, a journey fraught with risk and the possibility (and
eventual certainty) of death, so that he might come again to his beloved
Penelope.
In the world of the
immortal ones there can be no such thing as risking one's life for the love of
another. There can be no room for the heroism of sacrifice. No wonder the gods
fall in love with mortals, for compared to the anaemic possibilities of
immortal love the love of mortals is always going to be more passionate and
intense. What, for example, becomes of the desire to protect and nurture
another when welfare is guaranteed in advance? What sense can there be in the
anxious and loving attention one pays to a fragile human baby if human life is
invulnerable?
Advances in
biotechnology and medicine are constantly pushing back the limits of our
mortality, helping us live ever-longer lives. It's one thing to push against
the limits, it's another thing entirely to imagine
human life without any such limits. For it is our fragility
that makes us what we are. And as Nietzsche argued against Christianity,
the fantasy of never-ending life, of life without fragility, is not a
celebration of the human but a disparagement of it.
But Nietzsche
misunderstood Christianity on this point. For the aim of Christianity, as well
as that of most of the world's mainstream religious traditions, isn't about
living forever: it's rather about the transfer of interest from self to God.
"We must divest ourselves of the idea that limitation implies something
derogatory or even a kind of curse or affliction," argued Swiss theologian
Karl Barth. Rather, Christianity speaks of dying-to-self. What this involves is
wholly incompatible with the ego's obsessive desire to go on and on. For
eternal life isn't living forever: it's a freedom that begins the other side of
self-regard.
· The Rev Dr Giles Fraser
is the vicar of Putney and lecturer in philosophy at Wadham college,
giles.fraser@parishofputney.co.uk
Special
report
Ethics of genetics
Full text
Human Fertilisation and
Embryology Act 1990
The human reproductive cloning bill (pdf
file)
Explained
18.01.2002: Human cloning
Stem cell research
Interactive guides
Human cloning: how it might be done
The human genome
Weblog special
Human cloning in links
Useful links
Human fertilisation and embryology authority
Chief medical officer's advisory group on human cloning
GeneWatch UK
BioIndustry Association
Current patents list (pdf)
Human genome project
EU information