TEN QUESTIONS FOR CLONOPHILES :

The only permissible faith in modern society is faith in science. Even as decent and reasonable an intellectual as Andrew DelBanco has said that : "[religious] belief is really not an option for thinking people today". This effectively removes the possibility of raising religious/moral objections to pretty much any idea or practice amongst polite company. Yet, so long as a hypothesis is scientific in nature, one can speak of it as if it were fact, wield it in an argument as if it were"truth", and portray anyone who fails to pay it obeisance as anti-science, superstitious, god-addled, a luddite, or worse. If you question the progress of some particular aspect of science or the wisdom of its practice you are assumed to oppose science itself, to pose a threat to the very age of reason. And so, at least among the elites, the dispute over cloning and genetic engineering has quickly degenerated into a kind of medieval Inquisition, with anyone who suggests that it might be inadvisable to allow unfettered experimentation being treated as if they were mouthing the Albigensian heresy.

Let us then try to shift the plane of the argument slightly. Forget for a moment any questions of science or morality--proponents refuse to acknowledge moral ramifications; opponents don't think the scientific promise can ever surmount the moral concerns; so why bother continuing to bang our heads on that wall. Let's assume for the sake of argument that all forms of cloning and genetic manipulation are to be allowed and will work perfectly and that we have no moral qualms about them. Here are a few purely political questions we'd like to have answered:

(1) How much are we willing to pay for all this? Make no mistake, it is we. The taxpayers in general are going to end up paying for all this stuff because we aren't going to allow only the rich to have access to such technology; those days are long gone. Medicine today is by and large socialized, a shared expense of the population generally. So how much are we willing to see our taxes go up and our paychecks go down in order to pay for the life extension that this technoilogy promises?

(2) How are we going to pay for the results? Suppose that all of the various biotechnologies that are being developed right now result in a twenty year extension of the average lifespan of those of us who are alive right now. Sounds great, right? But we're all aware that Social Security and Medicaire are going to go broke in a few years and we haven't been willing to confront this fact. How then will we pay for people's golden years when their retirements last longer than their working lives? (N.B.--The easiest answer, that we'll just require people to work longer runs up against that the old will control political decision making and may choose not to.)

(3) On a related note, how will our politics change when the preponderance of our citizens are retirees, dependent on government for their livelihood? What is the future of freedom in a society where the majority requires ever increasing transfers of wealth from the minority (working age people)? Why would the young stay here? Will a nation of immigrants turn into a nation of emigrants?

(4) Even beyond the tension that will arise between young and old, what kind of tension can we expect between the old and the super-old. Right now, when you reach 65, you can reasionably expect that your kids will be on their own and your parents will be dead, or close to it. You are essenially free of familial duties. What heppends when our parents start living longer and longer and a substantial portion of our "retirement" turns into a period of caring for our very elderly and infirm parents?

(5) One of the arguments that is frequently made in favor of this kind of science is that if we don't do it, we'll fall behind others. Point taken. So now suppose that the industrialized West moves ahead with this kind of medicine. The population becomes even more preponderantly elderly, but only here in the West. In the Islamic world, Africa, and elsewhere the population continues to get younger. How does an aged nation protect itself, militarily when war is historically the province of the young? Will these decrept societies have to be prepared to resort to their greater technology--nuclear, chemical, biological--in order to fend off adversaries?

(6) We are well aware of the great reluctance with which those who have power surrender it. What is the future of a culture in which those who have power are capable of retaining it for years even after their mental capacities begin to diminish? Keep in mind, we're not just talking about Alzheimer's here or some other catastrophic illness that might be cured by this technology but just the normal deterioration of brain function that sees scientists, mathematicians and the like peak by the time they are thirty.

(7) What kind of restraints are we going to put on corporate America, which would has an obvious vested interest in employees who are healthy as oxen until they are 65 but then drop dead? Presumably we'll gain great knowledge about genetics and life expectancies and the like. Is it permissible for employers to cherry pick not on the basis of race creed or color but on the basis of likely health and time of death? If not, what kind of new government interference do those who advocate this science think should be allowed on corporate America, interference which they normally oppose?

(8) How do we restrict the rights and privileges of this dominant voting block as their capacities diminish? Do we really want Great Grandpa driving around town when he's 110? And if not, how do we stop him?

(9) How do we prevent them from restricting the rights of the young? We've heard in recent years about court cases where grandparents seek visitation rights to see their grandchildren. These cases have so far been decided against the grandparents. Will this remain true in a future where grandparents dominate? The aging of the population has already produced age discrimination laws, next it may produce affirmative action type laws for the aged, who have, of course, historically been discriminated against in the workplace (as with mandatory retirement). How will we restrain these impulses of the majority?

We've tried to strip out the science and the religion from these questions and to consider only the political implications of biotechnology. It seems to me that we are inevitably headed towards a future that is considerably less free as a result of these technologies and their unintended consequences. That is why it is so perverse that the main advocates, at least on-line, of this future are self-desribed libertarians. One has to assume that they've not thought their own positions through and are instead responding solely on the basis of their fetish for science and their visceral disdain for religious beliefs. But beyond religion and science lies politics and it is their blind leap into the political thicket that troubles us and should the thoughtful among them.

N.B.--Please feel free to respond to any of the question in the comments section or via email. We'll post any coherent responses that actually address the political concerns raised. We also welcome any further questions, so long as they are of a political nature.

RESPONSE : (from Rand Simberg) :
Your questions don't seem to pertain to therapeutic cloning per se, so much as to question the very notion of extending life.

ORRIN RESPONDS :
That's a valid point; in attempting to make this more generic and less about the specific science and religion of cloning it does come out sounding like I'm opposed to the very notion of extending life.

I did not intend to go quite that far. I meant that the rapid extension that biotech promises, and that its advocates assume will be its sole fruit, will create extreme pressures on a social fabric that is already fraying badly.

I am though an incrementalist. I would slow the pace of change to give us time to deal with these social problems and would start by limiting or banning extraordinary measures like cloning or transplants in older patients. Actually, the easiest way to slow all this stuff down is to return to a medical system where patients pay a larger portion of the bill for the services they recieve and where the government stops paying for such absurdly expensive procedures all together.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 15, 2002 3:00 PM