Cloning human beings would be a disaster

Says Dr David King, ethics campaigner and director of Human Genetics Alert

Cloning is often framed as the stuff of science fiction, but it is not wild speculation

The fact that scientists have successfully cloned monkeys for the first time is a worrying stepping stone towards cloning human beings.

So far attempts have foundered on technical difficulties – we haven’t found a way to do so safely.

But if people are developing that technology so it works in monkeys – genetically closer to humans than any animal cloned so far – they are potentially developing technology that may be used to clone humans.

My biggest worry is that this is another step towards designer babies, where people try to enhance their children. Cloning is the ultimate example of that because you know exactly what genes your offspring will have. You don’t have any of the mixing process that goes on with sexual reproduction.

That does something very bad to humans’ ethical state. We all have hopes for our children but most of us accept we don’t get exactly what we want. For example, you might not get the boy or girl you want.

Once you start specifying characteristics, humans become just another designed commodity. That will have an immediate impact in degrading human rights. It will also affect how parents relate to children. If a parent wants a child to be musical they might be able to use cloning to ensure they have talent. But what happens if the child doesn’t want to learn the piano?

The parent has invested a lot of money so will put on pressure and the child is going to resent that, feel they aren’t wanted for themselves.

Cloning and genetic modification are often framed as the stuff of science fiction, bad things that might happen in the future. But it is not wild speculation.

We already have a growing market for genetic modification when it comes to sex selection. There are people already choosing whether they have a boy or a girl.

It is having disastrous effects in Asian countries, unbalancing the sex ratio in the population and leading to social consequences.

I see a situation within two or three years where some scientists say: “OK, we’ve solved the safety issue around genetic modification and cloning, now we are going to go to a country where it will be legal.”

That is why I’m trying to raise awareness that this is coming quicker than people think and why I consistently advocate a ban on cloning and genetic engineering.