Anti-cloning team
wins by a nose
Story and photos by
Daniel Wolfe

The topic of the 14th College of Communication Great Debate: "Should Human Cloning be Banned?"

Moderated by Journalism Department Chairman Bob Zelnick, the debate format allowed for three speakers on each side to advocate for their positions before the microphone was turned over to audience members to add their own points and observations.

Although there are many aspects and uses of cloning, most of the April 2 debate focused on its reproductive use, which could allow an otherwise infertile couple to have a child: exactly like one parent.

Judy Norsigian, executive director of Our Bodies, Ourselves, a health collective that produced the famous books on women’s health, defended a legislative ban on cloning. Her first point was safety, for both parent and clone. Even if the methods could be improved over time, “the first bad outcome simply cannot be avoided,” she said.

Norsigian also noted that the risks for the mother are at least as serious as those for other infertility treatments involving large doses of hormones and other potent drugs.

She also said that reproductive cloning treats babies as commodities. Just as a parent can choose a sperm or egg donor by the donor’s characteristics, cloning could intensify the trend toward “babies made-to-order -- the world of so-called ‘designer babies,’” Norsigian said.

Bioethics scholar John Robertson, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law, said he supported the practice of reproductive cloning “only when it is safe and effective.” Though experiments in cloning have been successful with animals, the three negative speakers agreed that it was not yet safe and effective for humans. Even so, they said, this does not justify its immediate banning.

“Reproduction is one of the most important experiences we can have,” asserted Robertson, the lead debater on the negative side, i.e., advocating no ban. While today an infertile couple can seek out an egg or sperm donor, “that’s not really an acceptable alternative to some couples who want to have genetic offspring,” he said.

Responding to the health risks raised by Norsigian, Robertson said that ovarian stimulation was “something that is done everyday in reproductive labs across the world without any of the harms that Judy Norsigian has alleged.”

Discussing the “designer baby” scenario, Robertson said, “cloning is not genetic manipulation,” reiterating that its primary use would be to allow infertile couples to have a child of their own.

The second speeches on each side were delivered by undergraduates at Boston University’s College of Communication. Melissa Troiano (‘04), who also studies at the College of Arts and Sciences, argued for the affirmative. She emphasized individual human dignity and how that sense would be altered “in a society of clones.” Because of their novelty, the first documented clone babies would have the hardest time as they grew up.

“The media would flock to their homes,” Troiano said, exacerbating their identity issues.

Troiano did not allow the “designer baby” concept to be dismissed. “Parents are already looking to control the sex, weight, height and intelligence of their children,” she said.

Katie Smith (‘03) argued for the negative side. She cited books such as Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, showing that this topic had been debated many times in various media before it had any potential in the real world.

Since cloning would be used to create a child genetically identical to one of its parents, Smith said the couple “will not be choosing someone outside the family unit,” reducing the scope of the designer baby argument.

Smith said the law should allow reproductive cloning to permit couples to have “a reasonable number of children,” phrasing that amused the debate’s moderator, Zelnick.

The final affirmative speaker was Patrick Lee, a professor of philosophy at the Franciscan University of Steubenville.

Lee devoted his speech to a topic that had been mentioned only briefly
before: cloning for biomedical research, which he said was “much worse than cloning to produce children.”

“The human embryo is a whole human organism,” he said, arguing that as such, it should not be subjected to experimentation and research against its will.

Lee Silver, professor of molecular biology and public affairs at Princeton University, was the final speaker for the negative side. Silver abandoned the lectern to deliver an animated closing speech about his personal involvement with the issue.

“I had the pleasure of meeting Dolly a couple of years ago,” he said, referring to the famous sheep cloned in 1996 by the Roslin Institute in Scotland.

Though the sheep recently died, Silver said this was not because she was a clone. “She was put to sleep because she had a lung infection,” he said. As for Dolly’s other health issues, Silver said, “During her life, her most serious health problem was that she had arthritis -- I have arthritis!”

Earlier affirmative speakers said that since a clone would be made from the DNA of a mature adult, that DNA would have deteriorated and might lead to health problems. Silver noted that a child born to a 35-year-old woman would be born from 35-year-old DNA from the eggs the woman carried all her life, so what was the big deal or difference?

Silver said that a similar debate took place when In Vitro Fertilization was the new reproductive technology, and that despite the attention given to it back then, people now born from this technology are treated the same as everyone else. Although it wasn't mentioned at the debate, the first "test tube baby," Louise Brown of Britain, did become a media celebrity due to the then-uniqueness of her conception.

After both sides presented initial arguments, the microphone was handed over to the audience. The lead debaters from each side then had an opportunity to rebut or expand on points made by the public.

Robertson, arguing for the negative, said that an audience member’s reference to survival of the fittest was a “staunchly eugenic” argument. He disagreed with another’s argument that some people might not be meant to have children.

Responding to a speculative comment of what would become of the failed experiments on the way to creating cloned humans, Robertson said, “we will have to wait and see what animal data and animal research shows.” Human cloning would come much further on.

Norsigian touched on an audience comment that her side was afraid of taking risks. “We are not living in a world without risk-taking, and nor am I suggesting we should,” she said.

Norsigian responded next to the idea that people will go overseas for reproductive cloning if it can’t happen in America. (Or, as one audience member put it, “if cloning were outlawed, only outlaws would have clones”).

“There are dozens of countries way ahead of us,” Norsigian said. “They have already enacted legislation banning cloning.”

After rebuttals, the audience voted by division to determine which side they thought won the argument. Zelnick, after some consideration, declared it a tie. When many in the audience began booing, Zelnick took another look, gazing more intently at the balcony of the Tsai Performance Center, and then changed his mind to grant a small margin to the advocates of a ban on cloning.

This year’s great debate was taped to air on C-Span and can also be viewed at the College of Communication web site - http://www.bu.edu/com/communication.html, where you can also register your opinion.