Ian Wilmut, "Cloning People"

Questions for Making Connections Within the Reading:

1. When confronted with new problems such as those raised by the possibility of human cloning, people sometimes try to address them by appealing to moral absolutes or to abstract philosophical principles. Approached in this way, cloning might be viewed as either right or wrong, ethical or unethical, humane or dehumanizing. How does Wilmut approach the issue? What do you see as the advantages and disadvantages of his approach?

2. Much of Wilmut's thinking depends on a crucial distinction between cloning and all other existing reproductive technologies. Do you find this distinction compelling, or do you feel that it amounts to a distinction without difference? Does it really matter, in other words, whether science duplicates biological reproduction or invents a new way of reproducing human life?

3. Search the web for sites that deal with human cloning. After conducting an informal review of your findings, describe the broad contours of the current debate. What positions would you say occupy the extremes? What positions lie close to the middle of the road? Does there seem to be a consensus on some aspects of the issue? Where would you place Wilmut? Is his position well-represented by sources on the Internet, or would you describe it as relatively marginal?

Questions for Writing:

1. Wilmut recognizes the influence of financial forces on the development of cloning technology, but he tends to overlook the personal and emotional dimensions of this innovation. In what ways are all reproductive technologies shaped by our needs, dreams, and anxieties--our ideas about personal fulfillment and a life well-lived? In what ways, conversely, has technology shaped those ideas? Feel free to consider technologies other than those directly tied to reproduction. Cars, television and movies, medical innovations, and the Internet might all be considered as shaped by, while also shaping, human desires.

2. Less than two years after Wilmut published this essay, there was news that teams of scientists in Europe and in the United States were competing to be the first to successfully clone a human. What do you think the appropriate response to these developments is? Should governments intervene to stop this research? Should average citizens have a say in whether work of this kind should go forward? Discuss Wilmut's argument against human cloning and the possible impact the development of this reproductive technology may have on human behavior.

Questions for Making Connections Between Readings:

1. In "Does God Have a Future," Karen Armstrong traces recent changes in our society's thinking about God. How are these changes likely to affect our responses to the issue of human cloning? Would the disappearance of a personal God lead to a diminished respect for human life, or might it have the opposite effect?

2. What lessons might Wilmut learn from Pollan's essay? Are the forces shaping reproductive technology fundamentally different from those shaping agriculture? Given what we learn from Wilmut about uses of procedures like artificial insemination, is there really any chance that McBabies--a commercialization of human life--will become commonplace in our near future? If people want french fries without blemishes, would they be likely to make similar choices in the pre-selection of their offspring?

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