Human Cloning: Religious Responses.

Ronald Cole-Turner, ed. Westminster/John Knox, $15, 15 pp.

M. Therese Lysaught

In February 1997, the word was out: the walls of the reproductive fortress had been breached - an adult sheep had been cloned. From TV news, newspapers, and magazine covers, Dolly's placid face stared blankly at us.

And many of us stared blankly back. Cloning? Although cloning-by-nuclear-transplantation was debated within the fledgling discipline of bioethics in the late 1960s, no one seemed prepared for it actually to happen. Most popular commentaries have provided detailed explanations of how the technique worked, hypothesized heart-rending and horrific scenarios of possible human applications, and identified ethical and theological questions. But little has been offered by way of substantial or compelling analysis. For readers interested in thinking more thoroughly about these issues, three books promise assistance; two deliver.

Gina Kolata, in Clone: The Road to Dolly and the Path Ahead, dispels the illusion that Dolly's birth came completely out of the blue. Kolata, a science writer for the New York Times, is credited as the "reporter who broke the story nationally." Here she tells the "story" in a broader sense, crafting a narrative account of science and culture in order to suggest that cloning "could not have happened at any time but now." Kolata begins in the late nineteenth century, tracing the development of the field of embryology, identifying key figures and their questions, briefly noting the context of postwar science in which the idea of human cloning was first broached, and weaving in a history of the development of bioethics in the 1960s. (She suggests that early bioethicists raised the issue of cloning in part as a marketing strategy to capture the public's attention and promote their nascent, struggling field.) The narrative continues with more in-depth accounts of recent cloning claims, set in the context of scientific and cultural developments in the 1970s (recombinant DNA, concerns about overpopulation, cloning in popular fiction, scandals, and fraud), culminating with Ian Wilmut's production of Dolly and the public response. In telling this story, Kolata also provides an enlightening window into the workings of science journalism as well as a particular take on the cultural dynamics of the scientific community.

Clone is a quick read and engaging. While it is certainly a must-read for anyone interested in the topic, even a casually informed reader will quickly discern problems in the presentation. First, and surprisingly, Kolata's narrative omits two rather important pieces of the story: the eugenics movement of the early twentieth century and the cloning controversy which occurred in 1993. In 1993, Robert J. Stillman and Jerry Hall at George Washington Medical Center announced to a stunned world that they had cloned seventeen human embryos. Although Stillman and Hall's work involved a different technique (the technologically mediated twinning or splitting of in vitro embryos) and did not involve the implantation of the embryos, it is a significant piece of the story insofar as it was clearly a human application, and it defined the terms of the public debate. The response to Dolly in 1997 was, for the most part, 1993 redux.

The page-turner flavor of Clone testifies to Kolata's experience as a journalist. At the same time, however, she is not burdened by the myth of journalistic objectivity. This brings us to the second problem. For as she tells the story of cloning, another narrative emerges - the narrative of the scientific "hero." Reading Clone, one gets the impression that those who labor in the scientific mainstream are a glitzy, cliquish, gossipy elite (all terms used by Kolata) easily misled by charismatic figures, prone to group thinking and extreme reactions, and fettered by scientific "dogma." They also have the embarrassing habit of being wrong. Kolata's "heroes," on the other hand, are "the animal scientists, the only ones brave enough to take up the cloning problems" [emphasis mine]. They are "intrepid," "soldiering on" in isolation from the mainstream, those with the "utter liberty" to attempt "the daring experiments that broke the laws of nature" [sic]. The individual who most fully embodies this persona is Danish scientist, Steen Willadsen. Clearly mesmerized by Willadsen, Kolata describes him - without obvious warrant - as "near-mythical," and as "one of the most unusual and brilliant scientists the twentieth century has seen." Willadsen is depicted as the consummate individualist and opportunist, brash, a "secret innovator," "visionary," and unconstrained by the system. Likewise Ian Wilmut, though sharing few of Willadsen's characteristics, emerges as a hero insofar as he is outside of the university-based scientific establishment.

Thus, at the end of Clone we have a particular kind of scientific hero, not an Einstein or even a Watson and Crick, who discovered fundamental scientific truths and changed the very nature of their disciplines. Nor do we have an Alexander Fleming or Jonas Salk, the discoverers respectively of penicillin and the polio vaccine, whose contributions brought healing and disease prevention on a global scale. Rather we end up with scientist-as-typical-American-hero, whose heroism is defined by his autonomy and penchant for bucking the "system": one who arrogantly and dismissively "takes a stand" against a cautious, societal-ethical wisdom, one who plows ahead without thinking about the consequences.

Kolata's handling of the "ethical" issues is equally suspect. Here her training as a journalist becomes a liability, for she is unable to provide an in-depth, balanced analysis of the arguments behind the positions she cites. In chapter 1, opinions of various ethicists and theologians are presented as having equal merit, embodying her belief that: "[I]f there is one lesson of cloning it is that there is no uniformly accepted way to think about the ethical questions that it elicits, and no agreement, even among the most thoughtful and well-informed commentators, about what is right and what is wrong."

Ironically, despite this lack of agreement, it is clear that for Kolata cloning is, in the end, unqualifiedly good. The final chapter is comprised almost exclusively of reasons for cloning. She makes emotional appeals for the range of human applications - pharmaceutical production, growing one's own organs for transplant (in vitro, of course), and helping couples who are "infertile and desperate to have a baby of their own." She quickly discounts as straw objections the potential for inflicting unknown genetic harm on cloned persons and the possibility that cloning might result in accelerated aging or cancer. She seems convinced by biologist Lee Silver's argument that "cloning is actually genetically safer than normal sexual reproduction," and cites him often. Neither Silver nor Kolata seem to recognize how Huxleyian their rhetoric has become. She baits those with reservations about cloning by closing her book with a provocative claim from Willadsen - that human cloning has likely already "accidentally" taken place in the context of in vitro fertilization.

Kolata's analysis is shaped by a minimalist ethical framework - the increasingly commonplace meld of utilitarian libertarianism (autonomy with a splash of beneficence as long as no one is harmed). From within this framework, it is impossible to formulate any serious objections to something like cloning. To do so requires a more nuanced cultural and conceptual perspective.

Where Kolata fails, Jeremy Rifkin surprisingly delivers. In his book The Biotech Century: Harnessing the Gene and Remaking the World, Rifkin offers a more complex account of the cultural narrative that has brought us to this point. Rifkin, president of the enigmatic Foundation on Economic Trends, is best known alternately as either a troublemaking Luddite, prone to emotional sloganeering and to filing lawsuits, or as the Ralph Nader of biotechnology, championing the interests of the voiceless environment and citizen. Thus, many readers might dismiss this book simply because Rifkin wrote it. That would be a mistake. I approached it - my first exposure to his work - intrigued but skeptical. What I found was a cogent and compelling account not of cloning per se (which receives only passing treatment) but of the network of cultural and conceptual constructs both driving and issuing from biotechnology.

Rifkin argues that "we are in the throes of one of the great transformations in world history," a fundamental economic and social reorganization from a primarily industrial socio-economic order to one mediated by biotechnology. This sort of transformation, he suggests, requires a convergence of changes in specific technological and social forces, seven of which he discusses at length. Greatly abbreviated, they are: (1) seeing the gene pool as the primary raw material for economic activity; (2) the parenting of genes and living organisms; (3) the globalization of commerce and trade; (4) an emergent commercially driven eugenics culture; (5) an ideology of sociobiology (nature over nurture) that facilitates cultural acceptance of the new biotechnologies; (6) the merging of information technologies and genetics; and (7) a new understanding of nature undergirding a new cosmological narrative.

Rifkin devotes one chapter to each of these seven "strands," linking each to a counterpart in the industrial era. For example, he begins the chapter on information technologies with a discussion of the cultural impact of printing in the fifteenth century. Although he at times paints in broad strokes, the comparisons are suggestive. His chapters on patenting life and the environmental impact of transgenics (genetic engineering involving different species) are a bit tedious and perhaps given to overstatement, but he marshals an impressive amount of information. Moreover, on the topics with which I am most familiar - eugenics and sociobiology - his analysis of the contemporary issues is on target. His final chapters, on the confluence of computers and genetics and on the emergent cosmology, are original and compelling.

In the end, although his biases are clear and he is far more critical than approving, he does not advocate for or against any particular technological development. There is no frantic condemnation of science and genetic technologies or a Luddite call to return to an idyllic past. Rather, he challenges the reader to accept a crucial and cogent proposition: that "technological innovations [are] socially constructed projections of [a particular] world view, nurtured by market forces and made current by the prevailing social milieu." He demonstrates that complex interrelationships exist between particular practices or technological developments, philosophical concepts, and economic and social structures. One example discussed at length is how Darwin's theory of nature (evolution), British industrial capitalism, and the practices of Social Darwinism obviously complemented one another. Similarly, a convincing analysis of the confluence of information technologies, genetic engineering, and postmodern philosophy leads Rifkin to the conclusion that: "Life, long thought of as God's handiwork, more recently viewed as a random process guided by the 'invisible hand' of natural selection, is now being reimagined as an artistic medium with untold possibilities."

Rifkin is not fatalistic. Rather, he notes "the question is what kind of biotechnologies will we choose in the coming Biotech Century?" He seems to believe that, even in the face of this overwhelming sociotechnological shift, individual decisions can make a difference. He calls upon readers to understand the dynamic social and cultural matrix underlying what appear to be "individual" decisions or "isolated" technological developments and to choose practices that will foster a world they will want to live in.

While I am not as optimistic as Rifkin about the power of individual or even communal decisions to counter effectively the momentum of the changes he has described, he understands the crux of the ethical question. For it is not simply a question of whether cloning is "right" or "wrong." It is a matter of understanding how certain philosophical and political convictions produce certain technological practices and how, in turn, participation in particular practices commits us to certain beliefs. How does one live, for example, if one believes that life is an infinitely manipulatable "artistic medium with untold possibilities"? In short, it is a matter of who we understand ourselves to be, who we hope to become, and what sort of world we seek to live in. It is only after answering these questions that one will be able to articulate a cogent critique of cloning.

Here, ethics elides into theology. Without naming them as such, Rifkin identifies what are ultimately important theological questions. The task of discussing them falls explicitly to Human Cloning: Religious Responses, a collection of twelve essays by Christian ethicists and members of denominational bodies.

If one is looking for a compelling theological analysis of cloning, one will find little help here. Overall, this book is quite disappointing. Not only will it not assist those who are serious in their faith in interpreting cloning; it will likely bolster the opinion among scientists and secular ethicists that Christians (or religious perspectives) really have nothing to add. Each essay is short, averaging ten pages (including footnotes and bibliography), which does not provide much space for in-depth analysis. As the authors are covering the same ground, the essays are repetitive, and many simply rehash with little depth what have now become commonplaces: dominion versus stewardship; the imago dei; human uniqueness and dignity; God's sovereignty; etc. Except for one essay, readers will find little if anything new.

While a number of methodological correctives could be suggested, I will mention only three. First, religious traditions ought to be situated as just that - traditions, traditions of wisdom, reflection, practice, and argument that have evolved over millennia. For too many of the essays, "religious" concepts appear to be generic, unanchored to any tradition which might offer them substance. Second, even those who cite biblical warrants detach these concepts from Scripture. For example, many of the authors cite the notion of imago dei, immediately drawing the conclusion from one line in Genesis that either humans are thus created by God as unique and individual or that, because God is creative, it is human nature to likewise be creative. But it is methodologically deficient to draw conclusions from a single scriptural verse. If biblical warrants are going to be invoked, they must be fleshed out. Third, one cannot draw adequate theological conclusions from one or two biblical concepts. As in science, to practice the discipline well, one must deal with all the data; one cannot simply select the data that best support one's conclusions and ignore the rest. Thus, the notion of the imago dei must be related to, and interpreted in light of, other central theological concepts and communal practices - for example, sin, discipleship, prophetic justice, forgiveness, the people of Israel, and the Christian ecclesia.

The only essay that embodies this sort of methodological rigor, and the only one that offers anything new and insightful, is "Cloning the Human Body" by Stanley Hauerwas and Joel Shuman. In characteristic form, Hauerwas and Shuman change the question, claiming "the question for us is not whether cloning is a good or a bad thing.... 'Cloning' is not a new thing for Christians....but whose body, exactly, should we be nonsexually, reproducing? For Christians have for nearly two thousand years been about the business of nonsexually reproducing the one body that matters most, and indeed the only one that must be reproduced in pursuit of the human good, and that is Christ's body." Hauerwas and Shuman's argument unfolds scripturally (working primarily from the New Testament rather than Genesis, as would befit a Christian analysis), unpacking the concept of the human body through a Pauline interpretation of baptism. The authors resist the modern tendency to make Pauline language "'mere' metaphor" and hold that baptism changes one's embodiment such that, for Christians, one's primary identity no longer resides in one's genes and genes no longer determine one's destiny. In a move that would resonate with Rifkin, the authors suggest that practices like baptism commit Christians to certain realities, in this case regarding the body, which in turn affect how we live out our relationship with others, with nature, and with God.

The books by Kolata and Rifkin are informative, accessible, thought-provoking, and enjoyable to read. Those interested in theological analysis must, unfortunately, await future publications.

M. Therese Lysaught is an assistant professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Dayton and a member of the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee (RAC) at the National Institutes of Health.