The clone wars: A reason online debate

Reason, June, 2002 by Gregory Stock, Francis Fukuyama

Fukuyama speaks of safety, but his reluctance about even safe and highly desirable technologies suggests that his major concern is neither safety nor aberrant misuse. Moreover, he admits that these dangers are well covered by existing agencies and institutions. He makes his primary focus explicit in his book when he complains that the Food and Drug Administration is charged only with establishing "safety and efficacy," while we need institutions that can look at ethical consequences.

For the most part, Fukuyama is vague when it comes to precisely what we should prevent. This may be good strategy, because notions of safety, caution, and minimized externalities are so appealing. But it is deceptive because it is in the details that the rubber meets the road.

In fairness, Fukuyama is specific about banning human cloning, which in today's climate is about as risky as coming out for motherhood. His reasoning here is faulty, however. To liken a blanket ban on reproductive cloning to a ban on incest is not even fathomable if one considers the cloning of a deceased child or someone other than the parent. But as I said, cloning is a sideshow.

A more interesting situation is sex selection. I argued that in the U.S. such selection--which can be done by sorting sperm, so that no embryos are destroyed--is innocuous. Sex selection does not harm children; indeed, it likely benefits them when a child of the "wrong" sex would seriously disappoint his or her parents. Fukuyama brings up the lopsided sex ratio in China, but this does not justify regulating the practice here, where such imbalances do not arise from the practice. Moreover, the problem in China is hardly an argument for government regulation, since sex selection there has long been illegal. Indeed, government regulation in China--namely, its one-child policy--exacerbates the problem of gender balance by pushing parents who want a boy toward aborting a girl, since they can't try again. Fukuyama opposes sex selection here and has proposed the formation of a review board like the one in Britain that has barred this procedure. But does he have anything better to offer than a fear that the practice would be a step down a slippery slope? If he sees a serious externality to sex selection in the U.S., it would be worth hearing about.

In response to my comments about the obvious appeal and benefit of future anti-aging medications, Fukuyama points out that "negative externalities can arise from individual choices to...prolong life at the cost of a lower level of cognitive and physical functioning." This is true, but it is a frightening basis for legislation (as opposed to decisions regarding government funding). I shudder to think about regulatory boards tasked with balancing the additional years that an individual seeks against the social cost of those years. To see the peril, we need only apply Fukuyama's logic to medicine generally.

If he does not want to allow interventions to slow the onset of aging and bring longer lives of relative health (though presumably not matching the vitality of youth), then why not block all treatments for the aged and debilitated? Their extra years are a net cost, and withholding medical treatment for those over 65 would work wonders for our ailing Social Security system. It isn't much of a step to go even further and block medical interventions that save accident victims who suffer crippling injuries.