Human cloning and human dignity.
Judging from the official documents dealing with the moral and legal aspects of human reproductive cloning there seems to be a nearly worldwide consensus that reproductive cloning is incompatible with human dignity. The certainty of this judgement is, however, not matched by corresponding arguments. Is the incompatibility of reproductive with human dignity an ultimate moral intuition closed to further argument? The paper considers several ways by which the intuition might be connected with more familiar applications of the concept of human dignity, and argues that there is no such connection. It concludes that the central objections to human reproductive cloning are not objections relating to dignity but objections relating to risk, especially the risks imposed on children born in the course of testing the method's safety.
Birnbacher
Dieter
D
Philosophisches Institut, Universitätsstrasse 1, D-40225 Düsseldorf, Germany.
D019976:Cloning, Organism / Q000941:ethics*; D004992:Ethics, Medical; D006806:Human Rights; D006801:Humans; D027724:Reproductive Techniques, Assisted / Q000941:ethics*; D014944:World Health Organization