cloning

cloning. There is no ‘official’ Buddhist position on cloning nor is one likely to emerge since there is no central authority qualified to speak for the religion as a whole. Based on traditional teachings, however, the attitude of Buddhists in general towards recent advances in genetic engineering is likely to be one of caution. In particular, there are grounds for serious concern surrounding the technique of nucleus substitution. This is when the nucleus of a fertilized egg cell is extracted and replaced with the nucleus of a cell from another being in order to produce a twin of the mature animal, as in the case of Dolly the sheep in 1997.

Buddhists are unlikely to have the same objections to the technique as Christians or other theistic religions. For Christians, to bring into being a new human or animal life by cloning may be seen as usurping the role of the creator. This is not a problem for Buddhism, because in Buddhism the creation of new life is not seen as a ‘gift from God’. For this reason the technique in itself would not be seen as problematic. Furthermore, although Buddhists understand sexual reproduction to be the overwhelmingly most common means by which humans and animals are reborn, it teaches that life can come into being through one of ‘four wombs’ (catur yoni). The last of these refers to the supernatural phenomenon of ‘spontaneous generation’ by which sages and supernatural beings have the power to materialize a human form. Life can thus legitimately begin in more ways than one.

Although the technique of cloning may be morally neutral in itself, there are concerns surrounding the purposes for which it may be used. These centre on the fact that the nature of the technique leads life to be viewed as a product rather than an end in itself. The clone is produced by technicians in a laboratory, and for most of the purposes envisaged so far is then treated as an expendable resource rather than an individual with its own rights and intrinsic dignity. It is hard to see what purposes—scientific or otherwise—can justify the dehumanization that results when life is created and manipulated for other ends. For example, if the clone is to be used to provide spare organs for the person cloned, it would mean that individual life was being produced to be used as a mere instrument for the benefit of another, and effectively treated as property in the way slaves once were. Such dehumanizing techniques would be repugnant to Buddhism, which teaches that individual beings (both human and animal) are worthy of respect in their own right. Buddhism is more concerned about animals than some other religions, and so is likely to be more cautious about the use of animals in experiments of this kind. It should be remembered that Ian Wilmut, the creator of Dolly, failed 276 times before Dolly was conceived. Naturally, in the case of human beings a failure rate of this kind would be even graver, and when weighed against the benefits to be gained from human cloning identified so far the risks do not appear to be justified. In fact, there appears to be no single compelling reason for cloning human subjects. The benefits identified so far fall into two main groups: as an aid to current IVF techniques, and use for genetic selection or eugenics purposes. The numbers who would benefit from the first are very small, and history has shown the potentially grave consequences of the latter. See also Stem Cell Research; Medicine.