A C Grayling: We should not let baby Eve tempt us away from progress

Of all the advances made in recent years by medical applications of genetics, the one that has promised most controversy is the cloning of human beings. Troubled debate about the prospect of such a development was sparked when the Italian doctor Severino Antinori recently claimed that one of his patients was pregnant with a cloned foetus. But reports that human cloning hasresulted in a birth are causing a worldwide explosion of ethical concern. To many, the idea of human cloning seems a profound violation of the sanctity of human life. Now that it is alleged to have happened, the calls for it to be banned are growing fast.

The alleged clone is a little girl called Eve, and she was born to a 31-year-old American woman by Caesarean section on the day after Christmas. Her name and the timing of her birth are unquestionably intended as significant gestures. The cloning is claimed by a company called Clonaid, owned by a religious flying-saucer sect called the Raelians. They believe that humankind came to Earth from civilisations elsewhere in space, and for them the use of all forms of technology, including reproductive technology, is seen not as an insult to whatever they worship, but as the fulfilment of a mission.

There is only one certainty about what might come out of the furore over Eve, and that is that our unpreparedness for ever-swifter developments in medical genetics will increase confusion and lead to bad laws prompted by emotion alone. Already, there are calls for human cloning to be banned outright, mainly from people and organisations already committed to the view that human reproduction should remain as close to the chance character of mammalian conception and birth as possible.

To clarify what is at stake one has first to separate questions of practicality from those of principle. Both matter, but the latter are crucial for the long-term future of genetic medicine, and therefore humanity itself. The question of practicality is an easy one. There are two kinds of cloning, one for purely therapeutic purposes where cells are reproduced to provide a therapy for degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and others. Embryonic cells are used as a basis for reproducing genetic material from a host, although stem cells from adults can also be used. In therapeutic cloning there is no intention of producing another human being.

Reproductive cloning has this latter aim in view. There is no guarantee that it is safe and reliable; on the contrary, the health of the world's first cloned mammal, Dolly the sheep, suggests that clones might suffer premature ageing and a variety of genetic disorders. On the scanty evidence available, some specialists predict serious complications and an early death for baby Eve if she is a clone. While so many unknowns surround cloning, the use of the technique for human reproduction cannot be right.

Therapeutic cloning, by contrast, offers a powerful new weapon in the battle against human suffering, and promises powerful treatments for presently incurable and often devastating conditions. Certain groups oppose even this form of cloning because it involves "harvesting" embryonic cells produced for the purpose. Anti-abortion groups are hostile to anything that interferes with natural (for some this means "god-given") reproductive processes. The practical difficulties with reproductive cloning do not however entail that, if they were solved, the principle is wrong. Here, predictably, matters are more complicated, but no less clear. There are three issues involved: the nature of clones, the ethics of reproductive technology, and the point of parenthood.

A clone is an identical twin. When one realises this, and when one considers that older siblings often help to bring up younger siblings, the idea of a cloned child loses much of its power to generate a science-fiction frisson. Women unable to have children by other means would in effect be bearing their own or their husband's twins, and raising them in the usual way of family ties. There is nothing frightening about the idea of identical twins, and nothing unnatural about sibling relationships of love and care; therefore there can be nothing objectionable about a clone and its relationship with its family.

Those who are untroubled by twins and sibling relationships might nevertheless object to the use of technology in reproduction. Their objection would therefore embrace in vitro fertilisation too, and perhaps even donor insemination, for both of these techniques, like cloning, are designed to help women who cannot conceive normally.

But as soon as one sees that all these techniques have the aim of helping women to have children ­ women who so want to have children that they submit themselves to the effort, expense and difficulty of the process, and who might be expected to be highly committed mothers ­ any sustainable objections melt away. Those that are left are prompted by the view ­ usually religious in origin ­ that nothing must be allowed to interfere with natural mammalian reproduction and birth. It amounts to the harsh view that if a woman cannot have children by natural means, she must accept the fact and remain childless. In their view, whether conception occurs, and whether the resulting pregnancy comes healthily to term, are to be left to chance, or as some put it, to providence.

To be consistent, holders of such a view should oppose pre-natal monitoring and treatment for conditions like eclampsia, checks such as amniocentesis for genetic disorders, epidural anaesthesia, Caesarean section, and other obstetric aids, since these too are human interventions in the reproductive process. The result in human suffering of the absence of such aids are easy to see in the Third World; withholding them scarcely amounts to ethical behaviour. By parity of reasoning, the point extends to reproductive aid.

For some, a question is prompted by desire for parenthood so strong that it will seek any means to its fulfilment, including cloning. Is this not selfishness or egoism, ask the doubters, a self-regarding hunger to have a child at any price? It does not seem to be about future human beings born and raised for their own sake, but for the satisfaction of would-be parents.

This question misses the point of parenthood. It fails to distinguish between the question of why conceptions happen and why parenthood happens. Many conceptions happen by accident, but if there is a resulting birth it will usually be because it is as wanted as if the conception were planned. If it is unwanted, a termination is available to most. The biological drive which prompts many women to have children, as a natural mechanism for the species to replenish itself, is well served by the desire ­ usually but not exclusively a female one ­ to be a parent. This desire is so powerful that when it is frustrated it can be the source of great grief. Reproductive technology helps some of these: the really keen. They are likely to make good parents.

There is nothing unnatural about the achievements of human intelligence, itself a product of nature. They can be used for good or ill, and everything human is open to abuse, including cloning. But society can do its best to minimise abuses while reaping the benefit of advances in our understanding of the world, especially those that can make it a better place.

Dr Anthony Grayling is reader in philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London