This publication sets out the Danish Council of Ethics position on reproductive and therapeutic human cloning.
A unified Council of Ethics rejects human cloning ever being permissible for the purpose of creating a genetic copy of a human being. Although some of the Councils members acknowledge that the intuitive resistance to reproductive cloning cannot be substantiated in a single argument, the members nonetheless unanimously reject permitting reproductive human cloning on the basis of the comprehensive nature of several arguments,
- cloning will be a violation of human dignity,
- knowing that he or she has come into being as a clone will have adverse consequences for a person (right to an open future) and
- permitting research in view of reproductive cloning will reflect a disregard for the respect due to the moral status of embryos.
The members of the Danish Council of Ethics have different views on which sort of moral status the early embryo possesses. As a result, its members also have different views on the ethical defensibility of undertaking research into early embryos and, in the fullness of time perhaps, developing therapies for serious disorders, treatment of which is based on embryonic stem cells.
Five members consider the moral status of the human embryo such that embryonic stem cells must not be used; eleven members find that, in principle, embryonic stem cells can be used as long as substantial benefits are available for treating disease.
Nine of the members able to approve the use of embryonic stem cells in principle, however, find that there is no pressing need at the present to allow embryonic stem cells to be produced for research or possible treatment of disease, either by cloning or by the in vitro technique, as known from IVF therapy. This is because treating severe disease with stem cells is still only a theoretical possibility, and manufacturing embryos for any purpose other than having the embryo become a child may constitute a slide in values. Initially, therefore, these members recommend that research into embryonic stem cells be confined to embryos left over from IVF treatment.
Finally, two members feel that the use of therapeutic cloning with a view to research into the treatment of severe disorders is ethically acceptable, providing such research is carried out on very early embryos only, compare current legislation.
Read the publication
|
