Friday, January 17, 2003
The Curse of the Teenage Clone
We’ve heard a lot of talk lately about the ethical problems of human cloning, the dilemmas posed by scientists “playing God” with our genetic inheritance. But the Clonaid story really points to a deeper cause for concern: some parents want to play God, to make another being in their own image. The problem is that parents, as a general rule, lack foresight. They aren’t thinking of how the baby will grow into a teenager. The possibility of cloning calls on prospective parents to consider this one ineluctable fact.
Cloned children and designer children may be the wave of the future, and it’s easy enough to understand the attraction. For instance, if a man is unable to father children by the usual method, he can have his own DNA implanted directly into the egg. Naming would be easy. Wouldn’t I have to name my cloned son Joseph Chaney, Jr.? And what if my wife and I decided to clone more than one boy? The boxing champion George Foreman has paved the way in this regard, having named all five of his sons George: George Jr., George III, George IV, V, and VI. They aren’t clones, but that’s the idea: Foreman wanted to reproduce himself. In his case, the effort is an egotistical fantasy. But such fantasies may soon turn real.
Even where necessity seems to be the cause, what is inescapably at work in such projects is the desire for personal immortality, and maybe also personal revision. If I cloned myself, I could raise my second self as I wish my parents had raised me. My second self would learn foreign languages; would travel to Europe and become familiar with the music, art and architecture; he would be encouraged to read, and also would learn to invest wisely in the stock market. Why not? Who could know better than me what he needs? I could basically scrap my own ill-conceived, ramshackle life and devote my energy to perfecting Joe, Jr. He and I together could work on Joe III, helping him fulfill my own original potential even more perfectly. Maybe we three could team up on a few projects I’ve always longed to complete. And if I had five baby clones, what could stop us?
Ah, but you can see where this leads. Everything would run smoothly until the boys reached their teenage years; then I would discover all the hidden thorns among so many sweet roses. When normal teenagers say to their parents, “I hate you!,” what they partly mean is that they hate themselves, their blemished faces, their ungainly near-adult bodies, their newly discovered phobias and personality flaws. They also begin to sense the myriad ways in which they are bound to disappoint their parents and themselves. Deep down, they know that their parents aren’t to blame; but parents are convenient targets. In some vague way, they did start the ball rolling. The teenage clone, though, suffers from the knowledge that his physical self (and maybe his mental being as well) has been completely predetermined by his parents. He knows whom to blame for everything. “I hate being you!” he might cry. “What’s so great about you that you had to go and inflict your pathetic you-ness on me?!”
What the normal teenager is ultimately saying (and what he finally discovers in himself) is that he is not you. His teenage crisis is a separation anxiety which is resolved when he accepts the responsibility that goes with having a self distinct from his parents. This transformation is possible partly because he already understands the somewhat random nature of his existence. He is precisely no one who has ever lived before. The course of his life has not yet been charted. In that sense, too, his existence is miraculous. As his parents, you know that. But try living with the teenage clone. Try answering his question: “Who am I?” You would need to be a god.