Philosopher accepts the case for selective cloning

'Some have argued that to be born a clone would mean to be without a basic human right to one's own personal identity. This is nonsense'

A key chapter in Mary Warnock's latest book, Making Babies, identifies the critical issues at the heart of the debate over whether the cloning of babies is intrinsically wrong.

Lady Warnock, who has done more than anyone else to build the foundations for British in vitro fertilization (IVF) legislation, emphasises that it would be quite wrong for anybody to attempt human reproductive cloning for the foreseeable future because, for the moment, it is unsafe.

She writes: "No one should be permitted to subject their fellow humans to such risks, even if those people agree to become part of the trial.

"After all, those who really want children are genuinely desperate, and may be prepared to accept risks which in a more rational, less vulnerable frame of mind they would see as unacceptable."

However, Lady Warnock would like society to contemplate a "hypothetical" future where reproductive cloning is shown to be as safe as any other fertility procedure. What then should we be worried about?

It cannot be merely the fact that two or more human beings would share the same DNA that causes the moral outrage.

Identical twins, after all, share 100 per cent of their genes, says Lady Warnock, a moral philosopher who spent much of her career at Oxford University before becoming Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge.

"Some have argued that to be born a clone would be to be born without a basic human right, namely the right to have one's own personal identity," Lady Warnock says in her book.

"But this is nonsense. No one believes that identical twins, being spatially and physiologically separate from each other, do not each possess personal identity. Even Siamese twins are commonly held to have distinct identities."

It is also nonsense to suggest that cloning is morally wrong because only immoral people would want to clone themselves. Some infertile men and their wives might deeply want to clone themselves, she says.

Other opponents of cloning have suggested that it would place an intolerable burden on a cloned child who could come under pressure to be like his parent clone.

However, Lady Warnock sees no logic in this because the cloned baby would grow up in a different environment and at a different time with different influences.

She asserts: "There are already numerous sons who inherit genes from their father which they may see expressed in themselves, sometimes with dismay, such as a tendency to baldness or an addictive personality. This does not constitute an intolerable burden, or at least it need not. We are not, any of us, nothing except our genes."

Another objection centres on cloning being an irrevocable break with the basic biology of human reproduction, which has always relied on the sexual fusion of egg and sperm.

Although Lady Warnock believes that there is no evidence that this would be especially damaging to a child – no more so than, for instance, babies produced by IVF – she believes this fear impinges on the central objections to cloning. "These are social and political arguments. To produce a human clone seems to be the ultimate and most extreme example of the manipulation of human beings by other human beings," she says.

"The fear is rather that some person, or some regime, might one day exercise such power that people could be born to their command, in the numbers they dictated, and, worst of all, with the characteristics they thought desirable."

This is the fear of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. As Lady Warnock told The Independent: "It [cloning] would become a political tool, that some mad dictator would determine the number of clones either of himself or of inferior people who could be used for inferior jobs. That is a political argument for there being random or absolutely uncontrolled cloning." However, in reality human cloning could be tightly controlled by law so that it should never get to this state. It was therefore irrational for people to oppose cloning for all purposes merely because of the fears expressed in works of fiction.

Lady Warnock said: "The irrationality arises because of the very powerful effect of the question: what would happen if everybody did it? If every single case was looked at separately, if necessary by a court of law, then I think that that would take the sting out of the question what would happen if everybody did it because not everybody would be permitted to do it.

"If it becomes a procedure which is safe, then it seems to me there needs to be a lot of thought before it is absolutely ruled out because at the moment the arguments against it are overwhelming because of its extreme dangers and uncertainties. But supposing that those were overcome; then I think we need to think again about whether, in some individual cases, it might be used."

But even if cloning remained banned in Britain, this would not stop it being used elsewhere, such as in China, where much of the research was being done, Lady Warnock says.

Oxford University Press publishes "Making Babies: Is There a Right to Have Children?" next month