From Stephen E. Levick, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
The only human clones known are monozygotic twins: so it is understandable that Hugh McLachlan turns to them for a reassuring analogue to cloning by somatic cell nuclear transfer (21 July, p 20). Such reasoning by analogy can be useful, but you must take care to note any particular model’s weaknesses, as well as its strengths.
The twin analogy is highly relevant to the biological side of cloning, but minimally relevant for understanding the psychological and social consequences of cloning, since it does not reflect the age difference between the progenitor (somatic cell nuclear donor) and clone. Parents of identical twins may reasonably expect one to strongly resemble the other; but as contemporaries, one twin cannot rear the other.
Parents of a genetic replica would likely have a preconceived, vivid and idealised mental template of the clone’s progenitor, which would powerfully shape their expectations of the child. If a parent were also the progenitor, we could reasonably anticipate a heightened risk of narcissistic overinvestment in the child.
If you show people images of young children’s faces that have been morphed to resemble their own, they report more psychological investment in those children than in real children. Whatever the putative and conscious motive for cloning, such as infertility, the wish for a child resembling the progenitor would surely also be part of it.
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Should reproductive cloning be illegal? I believe that these risks, and certain others, are sufficient to justify the UK policy.
Discussions of cloning policy in the US are complicated by another issue: many people categorically opposed to abortion are also against research on embryonic stem cells and for them, all cloning is reproductive cloning. Though I oppose cloning to make human babies, current political reality here does not admit the critical distinctions necessary for scientifically enlightened national policy.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US
