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CHAPTER 14

Would Knowing You Were a
Clone Damage Your Sense
of Identity?

COSIMA: You know your clones, we call each other sister.
KENDALL: Call yourselves what you want.

You’re just a bad copy of me.
COSIMA: Were kind of over the whole bad copy thing.

It’s way more accurate for us to call you older sister.
—“History Yet to Be Written,” season three, episode ten

What if you suddenly learned that you came about in a way that no human before ever had? What if you learned that you did not really descend from the genes of the woman and man you thought were your biological parents but from a single ancestor, one of whose cell nuclei was implanted in a human egg?

Like the Leda sisters and Castor brothers in Orphan Black, you certainly would want answers to a lot of questions. To start, you would want to know from whom you were cloned, and why her and not someone else. Next, you would want to know as much as possible about her. Is she alive? If not, what was her life like? How long did she live? What did she die of? Did she have any afflictions that you might have, too? What was her personality, her weakneses, her strengths? Was she a villain or a heroine to other people?

If she were alive, you would probably want to meet her. Most children want to know where they came from, and any cloned child would want the same, especially since there would only be one “parent.”

Next, like the Ledas and Castors, you would likely want to know why you were cloned. Who hatched this plan? Were their motives good, bad, or mixed? Did they anticipate that you might turn out abnormal? Did they implant more than one identical cloned embryo? If so, what was their reasoning for that? Why not just one—you?

Would it be good or bad to learn that you were cloned? Would you feel it was good or bad to be a clone?

Philosophers like to make distinctions. As with scientists, they also like to say, “It depends.” Whether you view your identity as a clone as good or bad likely “depends” on why you were created—whether you were, as Alison said, “someone’s experiment,” or whether your creators had higher motives. Viewing your identity as a clone as bad relies on three (faulty) assumptions, which we’ll dissect one by one.

ASSUMPTION #1: ASEXUAL HUMAN CREATION INHERENTLY DEGRADES HUMANS ORIGINATED THIS WAY

Bioconservatives such as Leon Kass and traditional Catholic theologians claim that the reasons don’t matter; any creation of people through any method other than sex is wrong. Whether it’s in vitro fertilization, using harvested donor eggs to create embryos, or cloning, these naturalists think that all such techniques of creating humans are unnatural and forbidden.

Many others long ago jettisoned such views. Why? Because one in eleven couples is infertile by normal sexual reproduction, and if they want a baby that is genetically related to them, assisted reproduction is their only option. To date, more than a million babies have been created with such assistance. Genetically, joining sperm and egg outside the womb in a petri dish, then inserting the new embryo in a woman’s womb, is still technically sexual reproduction; the embryo thus created includes two sets of gametes, mixed. But it certainly differs from ordinary sex.

Let’s consider, however, another way in which assisted reproduction differs from traditional reproduction: The children created by assisted reproduction know that they were wanted. Barring creation specifically for experimental purposes, a cloned child would know the same.

When children result from parents having sex, the children don’t necessarily know that they were wanted. Sometimes (maybe more often than we would like to think) women get unintentionally pregnant and decide to carry the pregnancy to term. I was born in 1948, long before contraception became freely available and abortion was legalized in the United States. So although my mother assured me that I was, indeed, wanted, all I know for sure is that my parents had sex, my mother then got pregnant, and I was born.

In contrast, children created by assisted reproduction or by cloning can definitely assume they were wanted. Indeed, people who use assisted reproduction pay a lot of money (usually their own, because assisted reproduction is often not covered by insurance) for this service. Only about a third of couples using assisted reproduction actually end up with a baby, so often the process must be repeated at further cost. So, philosophically, assisted reproduction and reproduction by cloning would be chosen conception, not random conception, resulting in wanted children, not unwanted children.

ASSUMPTION #2: MOTIVES FOR WANTING CLONED CHILDREN MUST BE BAD

In Orphan Black’s third-season finale, we learned that Siobhan Sadler’s mother, Kendall Malone, is a chimera and the original ancestor of both the Ledas and the Castors. But why was she chosen? Does the reason she was chosen indicate anything about the original purpose behind Projects Leda and Castor? What special qualities did she have?

Hopefully we’ll get some answers to these questions in season four, because what we do know about the motives for creating the Ledas and Castors is minimal. Because the Ledas’ unique DNA is patented, we assume Topside and Dyad are interested in using them (and their unintended progeny) to make money in some way. We also know Ethan Duncan seems to have regrets about his role in the process, given that he sacrifices his life to prevent Topside from getting its hands on what he knows. As the end of season three revealed that Susan Duncan still lives, perhaps season four will reveal her motives. But the evidence suggests that the motives behind creating the Ledas are not good.

Orphan Black has also imputed negative motives to the creators of the Castors, whose aim, based on the Castors’ military training and on the conversation between Paul and Dr. Coady about their infectious protein, appears to have been to create living weapons that can be directed at enemies.

The literary associations of bad motives with creating cloned children so often overwhelm us that we sometimes find it hard to imagine good motives for anyone wanting to create a child by cloning. However, if we take a wider philosophical perspective, outside of Orphan Black and other stories, it is easier to see that not every would-be parent of a cloned child necessarily has bad motives. If we view cloning itself neutrally, as just another way to create children, we understand that parents could easily have good motives in creating children by cloning, such as avoiding genetic diseases in their families or hoping to recreate traits of a revered ancestor.

ASSUMPTION #3: GREAT EXPECTATIONS AND CLOSED FUTURES

This leads us to another question hotly debated among people who write about cloned babies: Would a child created by cloning have certain expectations placed on her— specifically, would she be expected to be like her ancestor? And would such expectations be bad for that child?

There is a common objection to cloning that I call the objection about a closed future. It says that all cloned children would be harmed by the expectations of their originators. A child originated from the genes of LeBron James would be expected by his parents, physicians, relatives, and friends to grow into a star athlete, not a rabbi. A child created from the genes of Taylor Swift would be expected to be both beautiful and talented in music.

A massive number of critics claim that because the ancestor of a cloned child has lived before, and because the child was presumably created because of the ancestor’s particular characteristics, the child’s future will be closed in a way that has not been true for every other human child who has been born before.

This closed-future objection assumes that a child should be wanted in and of herself, not for the particular characteristics she might have. Every child, critics of cloning say, should have a completely open, completely indeterminate future, a future not shaped by her creator’s expectations.

But, again, facing parental expectations is not an issue specific to cloned children. Let’s take a more prosaic example: Say, for example, you got a perfect score on the SAT and everyone expected you then to go to college and do brilliantly. What if you decided not to attend college? Or what if you didn’t do so well there?

This objection also seems to assume a historical situation in which would-be parents lack all choice or control over their future children’s traits. But today we can choose between a healthy baby and one with a lethal genetic disease; given that, is it wrong to choose the healthy one? If not, what is the underlying justification for letting nature’s randomness have its way?

Suppose prospective parents have good evidence that a child grown from an embryo containing the genome of Hillary Clinton will likely be intelligent and a child grown from one with the genome of George Clooney will likely be beautiful. Is it evil to choose those embryos for these reasons?

Critics argue that selecting characteristics of children is wrong in one of two ways: either intrinsically, or because such choices will create undesirable consequences for the child.

People who believe that choosing characteristics is intrinsically wrong often believe that it is up to God, nature, or evolution to determine who is born and with what characteristics, and it is wrong for humans to make such choices. But these people often confuse the claim that society should not make choices about which characteristics are desirable in human beings with the claim that particular parents should not make choices about a child’s characteristics. These claims differ a lot. The first takes away reproductive choice from couples and is eugenics. In contrast, the second expands reproductive choice for couples. Fears and concerns about the first do not justify curtailing the second.

Moreover, most people don’t believe it’s wrong to choose the characteristics of future children. In how they marry and plan to raise children, future parents make choices about which traits are desirable, and then later, when trying to conceive and after birth, try to bring about such characteristics. Prospective parents use genetic tests on embryos and fetuses to detect severe genetic disease and often abort those testing positive. During pregnancy, to help their fetuses be born normal and healthy, mothers avoid cigarettes and alcohol. Once children arrive, their parents—based on beliefs about desirable characteristics—send them to one kind of school rather than another, for example a religiously oriented school versus a magnet school emphasizing the arts.

Arguing that such choices are wrong also means accepting reproductive fatalism, the idea that one must accept any pregnancy that comes along and, with that, the characteristics of any child that results. Women who get unintentionally pregnant have endured reproductive fatalism for thousands of years. (Unsurprisingly, those who oppose genetic choice also oppose abortion and contraception. At least here, they are consistent.)

The second reason that people argue against choosing characteristics of future children is that they believe such choices will create undesirable consequences for the child. They object that some parents might put too much weight on one characteristic, such as intelligence or their ideal of female beauty, and then be very disappointed when the child does not measure up. They fear any child who lacks the desired characteristics will be rejected by the parents as damaged goods.

Ultimately this objection boils down to the claim that because some parents will conceive children based on ignorance, prejudice, or false expectations, we should block a whole new way of conceiving children. But if these suffice as good reasons for preventing people from conceiving, then almost all conceptions should be blocked. Most people on the planet do not think a lot about whether and how they should have children. Whether to saints or sinners, sober parents or drunken ones, children just (amazingly!) come.

GROWING UP CLONED

Almost all criticisms of human cloning assume that discovering that you are a clone would be traumatic. But can we imagine the opposite, that such knowledge might be a good thing?

Orphan Black’s characters express mixed feelings about their clonehood. As discussed, in the third episode of season one, “Variation Under Nature,” Alison screams to Sarah, “We’re clones! We’re someone’s experiment and they’re killing us off!” suggesting self-loathing. On the other hand, most of the Ledas—and certainly Sarah, Cosima, Alison, and Helena—benefit from the companionship of their sestrahood.

Critics of human cloning consider multiple copies of an ancestor being born and raised at the same time as a worst-case scenario, because it is supposedly damaging to suddenly discover there are two, three, or four copies of “you” walking around, as happens in Orphan Black. But as we know from the science and see in the show, these copies would be far from identical. If each clone had a different surrogate mother, then each would have different mitochondrial genes, epigenetic programming, and uterine influences. Each would presumably be raised in a different family—each with its own interpersonal dynamics—and some might grow up in different cultures. So even forty embryos gestated from ancestor Chris Rock might be very different when some chanced to meet at age twenty.

And even if some of these embryos were raised together, would that be such a bad thing? Suppose five grow up together. We know that twins develop a strong sense of intimacy, one more intense than other sibling pairs. So a set of five identical children would very likely have strong bonds and close relationships. What a support system they would have! Hard to believe any of them would ever experience the loneliness of an only child.

Over time, some individuals of a group of clones might choose to perpetuate the ancestral line. (Of course, if cloning were available, this choice would be solely up to each individual; it would not be a group decision.) This would be especially true for female clones, who could easily carry on a mother line, creating a kind of family dynasty. Instead of pejorative names like “alphas” and “betas” for assembly-line babies, we can imagine that members of such dynasties might proudly identify as Gershwins (from composer George Gerswhin) or Hamms (from soccer star Mia Hamm), such that over time, these familial names conveyed the emotional richness of today’s “Spielberg,” “Angelou,” “Einstein,” and “Roosevelt.”

So being a female in a cloned line of female Rockefellers that went back centuries might not be a bad thing. Indeed, the opposite seems likely; if this line prospered and their genes passed on, the descendants would probably enjoy riches, fame, and good health.

THE PRIME IMPORTANCE OF MOTIVES

One way of summarizing the above discussion is to say that, when it comes to a child’s feelings about herself, how she was created does not matter as much as why she was created. In other words, motives are what matter. Good motives are good for creating children and good for them as they grow, whether the children were created sexually, by assisted reproduction, or by cloning. Bad motives are bad for creating children and bad for raising them.

Moreover, if the alternative were nonexistence, few children would complain about the novel circumstances of their birth. From the point of view of harm and results, any life with a little happiness trumps no life at all.

In contrast, a child might rightfully complain if her parents had bad motives in creating her, regardless of the way she was originated. Suppose a parent told an adult child, “I didn’t really want a child, but I did want someone to take care of me in my old age,” or said, “I mainly had you so something of me would continue after my death.” These are bad reasons to have a child (cloned or otherwise), and bad things to say to your adult child; such an adult child might justifiably resent being conceived for such reasons. So, too, the Ledas justifiably resent Dyad and Topside and their apparently sinister motives.

The model here should be that of enlightened parents such as those of Brittany and Abigail Hensel, stars of the TLC reality show Abby and Brittany, who were born in 1990 conjoined as dicephalic parapagus twins: joined at the hip, sharing some organs, but each having a separate head and operating one leg and one arm apiece. From the start, their parents taught them that stares, jokes, and prejudice against them were society’s problems, not theirs. The healthy attitude of the parents has helped these kids develop healthy, functional attitudes toward the unique circumstances of their life.

Surprisingly, when you read most of the ethics literature about human cloning, almost all the objections do not concern physical safety or physical harm to cloned children, but instead concern the psychological harm of having the identity of a clone. Almost all such objections assume bad motives by those who want cloned children, or assume a society that regards cloned children as beings who either have been mentally traumatized or who will be considered objects of scorn by most people. As we’ve seen before, this kind of objection begs the question by citing prejudice as a reason for forbidding something. It’s like saying, “People will regard children with disabilities in negative ways, so we shouldn’t allow such children to be born.”

So whether a person originated by cloning would have a damaged identity because she is a clone is not a closed question but an open one, not a given fact but a dubious assumption, and not a foundation for laws but something instead to be overcome in the long march to regarding all humans— regardless of how they were created—as equal moral beings.

As many of the Ledas demonstrate, even with evidence of being created for bad motives, it is still more than possible to live a rich and (we hope, in the end) happy life.