Abridged excerpts from "A House Divided " A presentation of The American Enterprise Institute, December 22, 2002

The first speaker is Charles Murray

....The report of the President's Council on Bioethics is superb. It embodies the kind of reasoned discourse that you wish were used for all public issues and almost never is. Furthermore, Leon Kass was the best possible person to head up this effort....

It is then a wonderful document, but also I believe profoundly misguided. Here is how I wish the report had begun: As students of the history of science, we understand that it is not within our power or the power of the United States to have one iota of effect on what is going to happen with human cloning. This technology will develop at its own pace, and to an extent that will be dictated by what can be done, not by what we wish would be done.

We understand the folly of trying to imitate King Canute. But we are also students of the problems of being human and the problems of human institutions. And we see in this arising technology ways in which these institutions are placed at risk, especially that core institution of the family....

Therefore, our task is not to propose new regulations or laws, for we understand their futility, but to engage in dialogue with those who are doing this research so that we may manage it with as little harm and as much good as possible. That is what I wish the council's report had said.

It is simply not serious to think that the U.S. government can pronounce on what is going to happen with this technology. It can't. In no past instance has anybody been able to put a lid on scientific inquiry and its progress, and we won't this time, especially because biotechnology is so attractive to so many people.

....The scientists in the field do not see themselves as engaged in the work of the devil; they see themselves as bringing incalculable benefits to mankind. They do not see Leon Kass and other members of the President's Council as people who are trying to hold back and ponder at greater lengths extremely difficult moral questions. They see them as troglodytes.

Furthermore, hundreds of billions of dollars are to be made in biotechnology. If you take a group of scientists who think they are doing the Lord's work (even if most of them are not religious) and if there are hundreds of billions of dollars to be made, I promise you, it will happen. It may not happen in the United States if we pass certain laws, but it will happen.

....the council's report, much as I admire its tone and spirit, represents a missed opportunity. For once we realize that the development of this technology is inevitable, then our approach becomes quite different from the council's. Most importantly, we would take steps to make sure that the United States remains the center of this research....At least then the science would develop within an ethos of moral responsibility. Such will not happen if the center of research is in China, or if it is done under cover in Barbados.

The council's report exacerbates a number of problems. First, it gets in the way of a meaningful dialogue with the scientific community. My impression from conversations with scientists is that the Jesse Helms syndrome has set in, whereby if Helms favors a position, you can be sure that nobody in academia will admit to supporting it. We now have a situation in which the difficult moral issues posed by cloning are raised mainly by conservative Republicans....

A second problem concerns the portability of this science. I said a few minutes ago that China's laboratories will do the research if we don't. The report largely ignores this issue, noting only that strict laws against certain kinds of work have been passed in Michigan and in Germany, and yet their biogenetic industries seem to be doing just fine. I'm sorry, but that is not good enough.

We are at the very early days of a very big business, and the portability of science has increased enormously....The Internet has seen to that. You don't need to be in a university setting in order to have the state-of-the-art laboratories required for bioengineering. All you need is money, and there is going to be lots of money for this kind of work....What concerns me is that the United States will not be at the center of a promising new technology, and that the scientists who do the research will be socialized elsewhere.

....let me bring up a few additional topics people just don't want to think about. I have already mentioned China. Biotechnology within a fairly short period of time will open up all sorts of possibilities; some of them are awful. I don't think China is going to blink at any of them....

I imagine that there are a variety of questions that people might reasonably ask me, such as, "Is this man completely indifferent to the question of simply doing the right thing?" No, I am not. I am probably as troubled by this technology as Leon Kass. I may see more promise in the up side, but I certainly am worried by the down side. However, when one is making moral decisions not just for oneself but for large groups of people, a utilitarian calculus must enter in. Moreover, if I am right in arguing that we cannot stop the science from proceeding at least somewhere, then the council's report amounts to an empty moral gesture....

....I am willing to grant that if it were within our power to prevent human beings from having this, there would be a good moral case for taking government action. Yet if that cannot be done--and it cannot--one must face the fact that human beings will have this capacity eventually. The question then is: What can we do to minimize the damage and to enhance the benefits?

After a too frequent exposure to Kassian prose, the above seems like a miracle of clarity and insight. I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Murray's analysis. What says the Doctor in response?

I go back and forth on this....only thanks to the fact that there are certain firm and nonnegotiable limits do we have a safe moral realm in which prudence can govern.

I am inclined to say that creating nascent life for the sole purpose of exploitation and research involving its necessary destruction would transgress a moral boundary of that indispensable sort. However, though I am sympathetic to the arguments of Jody Bottum and Diana Schaub, and despite the fact that I regard the embryo as somehow mysterious, I don't believe that it is fully "one of us" ....We do not treat the demise of the five-day-old embryo as we do the death of a child, and we don't react with the same kind of horror--though maybe we should--at the dismemberment of 100 cells for the sake of saving lives as we would if we killed a two-year-old child to remove his kidneys so another child might be saved.

Yet it may very well be that such moral sentiments are a poor guide here. So let me shift to that question and take it up directly. I think repugnance is not an absolutely firm guide in these matters, but it is a warning....I don't think we can fully make an argument as to what is wrong with rape or murder or cannibalism. Our revulsion at these things is a guide that we are defending something that runs very deep.....

On the other hand, though I cannot believe that destroying an embryo is tantamount to murder, I am always impressed with the people who bear witness on this subject--even if they are going to lose in the end....I can't persuade myself that they are not right.

....nor can I persuade myself that cloning is akin to slavery. Yes, new lives would be created, and on a mass scale, purely to serve other people's purposes...But I am not sufficiently confident about the ontological or moral status of a five-day-old embryo to speak in such abolitionist terms. At the same time, however, I am inclined to give the embryo the benefit of the doubt, refusing to corrupt myself into thinking that we can use with impunity the seeds of the next generation to save our own....

That was a little...discursive. One more round of compression may be in order.

I go back and forth on this....

No, don't say such things.

....creating nascent life for the sole purpose of exploitation and destruction would transgress a moral boundary....However....I don't believe that it is fully "one of us" ....We do not treat the demise of the five-day-old embryo as we do the death of a child, and we don't react with the same kind of horror....at the dismemberment of 100 cells....

So, the embryo is not fully one of us.

....it may...well be that such moral sentiments are a poor guide here....I think repugnance is not an absolutely firm guide in these matters, but it is a warning....Our revulsion at these things is a guide that we are defending something that runs very deep....

Trust your feelings.

On the other hand, though I cannot believe that destroying an embryo is tantamount to murder, I am always impressed with the people who bear witness on this subject....I can't persuade myself that they are not right.

So is it murder or isn't it?

....nor can I persuade myself that cloning is akin to slavery....lives would be created....purely to serve other people's purposes...But I am not sufficiently confident about the....status of a five-day-old embryo to speak in such abolitionist terms. At the same time....I am inclined to give the embryo the benefit of the doubt....

Well. That was illuminating. As they say, read the whole thing. The above remarks addressed points raised by panelists Schaub, Bottum, and Galston. They have little relevance to Murray's argument. I was just torturing you, for fun. Now, on to the meat.

In the view of Charles Murray, the council's enterprise is futile. But my interest in the subject of cloning goes beyond whether or not we should engage in it. My interest is also in whether human beings through their political institutions can exercise at least some control over where biotechnology is taking us. Cloning is an occasion to see whether the community can exercise the will and discipline to make its moral voice heard, and to be a teacher of what can and can't be allowed.

So the futility angle is irrelevant. As ever, there is a bigger picture.

Cloning-for-biomedical-research has, alas, confounded the question, for it is really a small piece of embryo research in general. We should be arguing about cloning-for-biomedical-research in the context of all embryo research....

Excuse me Doc, but the the research cloning is absolutely key. Sick patients, remember?

So let's just talk about cloning for baby-making....The proponents have the obligation to explain why this is not just a whim but something society should countenance. A legislative ban in this country would shift the burden of proof, even if, in fact, there are renegade scientists elsewhere in the world who would practice it.

Nice try. And I love the term "renegade scientists". Will there be lasers? Murray wasn't addressing the question of rag-tag black op researchers. He was talking about Red China.

Charles Murray may be right that an opportunity to engage the scientific community was missed. Perhaps we should follow the British model and directly involve the biotech companies and their scientists, and design some kind of regulatory scheme....

Nah.

Yet such prudential boundary lines will always be moveable. Today, the focus is on stem cells. Five years from now we may discover that by putting these little embryos into a pig uterus and growing them to two months, their kidneys and primordial livers are even more valuable than the stem cells....

Or, we may not. C'mon Leon, why be so negative?

I am not quite so nihilistic as Charles Murray about the possibility of effective intervention. True, there is little precedent for the control of scientific progress. On the other hand, we have refused to allow the buying and selling of organs for transplant, even though markets in organs would yield more organs. This is a proscription that might not last, but it has managed to hold, at least for the time being.

He really does think he can pull it off. Based on very little evidence, too.

Many nations have enacted bans on all cloning, and, in fact, there is a convention under deliberation in the United Nations right now on whether to ban cloning....The United States is leading a coalition to produce the kind of ban that President Bush favors. I don't see any reason why we should shrink from this effort....the scientific community should understand....that progress must proceed within moral boundaries set by the norms of the international community.

Except when those norms are heading the wrong way. Then, we can stand proudly alone.

....it is simply not true that this research can't progress within certain moral boundaries, providing that the boundaries are not too severe. And it seems to me that the United States should be a leader in determining what should and should not be done....

What a lovely dream. Apparently Murray's concerns, though seemingly hard headed, are of no account and easily ignored.

The United States is unlikely, unless we step forward in this matter, to remain the center of ethical biotechnology. Yes, the Chinese might be less restrictive, but because we are Americans, because we believe in progress, and that if something can be done, it will be done.... we will have a very difficult time being the moral teacher of the world in these matters....life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness--are not sufficient to defend human dignity from biotechnology's onslaught.

So, if I'm reading this correctly, we actually can help set ethical standards for the world, but only if "we" work up the grit to "step forward in this matter", which would probably entail a lot less of that vulgar American freedom. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness just don't cut the mustard anymore. Which leaves what, exactly? Trains running on time, everybody?

Perhaps a governing body of wise elders could be our new guardians. They could wear white, flowing robes and read philosophy to us over the tele-vision machines. And we won't mind if they're stern with us from time to time. They will know what is best.