Comment & Debate
Nick Bostrom, Faculty of Philosophy at Oxford University. “Human Reproductive Cloning from the Perspective of the Future”. December 27th, 2002 – “In the big scheme of things, cloning will not significantly change the world. Some people will owe their lives to this technology, and some infertile couples will be grateful for having had the chance to raise a child of their own. Some people may misguidedly use cloning to try to bring back a lost child or a loved one, not realizing that personal identity is not reducible to genetic identity. Some people may choose to have a child that is a clone of a stranger they admire, perhaps a great scientist, athlete or religious leader; yet if the current level of demand for elite sperm or elite eggs is any guide, the people who choose this option will be in a tiny minority.
Meanwhile, other areas of technology will be advancing fast and furiously, leading to developments that will overshadow cloning. Some of these developments will be truly frightening – genetically engineered biowarfare agents, for example, and new weapons based on molecular nanotechnology. Those prospects deserve our serious attention and concern. Other developments will open up unprecedented opportunities for human growth and flourishing. One day we will find ways of halting and reversing human senecence. We will have the option of extending our intellectual, physical, emotional, and spiritual capacities beyond the levels that are possible today. This will be the end of humanity’s childhood, and the beginning of what one might call a “transhuman” era. Our descendants, or even you and I if we manage to stay alive until then, will look back on today and today’s primitive condition in much the way we now look back on our humanoid ancestors before they developed language, learned to use fire, and took up agriculture. Few of us would want to go back to that stage, and in the future few would wish to return to the present day.”