(Cerva and Stojkovic, 2007.). To avoid rejection, however, the stems cells should be derived not just from any embryo, but from a clone of the patient.
2.2 Cloning to produce a human organ bank
Here the idea is to clone a human being to produce another human with the same genetic makeup as the original individual, where the human clone will serve as an organ bank, so that if the original individual loses an arm in an accident, or winds up with liver cancer, appropriate spare parts will be available, and no problem of rejection will arise.
If the resulting cloned human being were a person, it would, of course, be wrong to take parts from him or her to repair the damage to the original individual. The idea, however, is that something will be done to the brain of the human that is produced so that the human organism in question never has a conscious thought, and thus is not a neo‐Lockean person.
2.3 Arguments Against Such Cloning
The objection to cloning that involves the destruction of human embryos is that such entities have a right to life. What support can be offered for the latter claim? There are three important arguments, appealing, respectively, to an immaterial mind or soul, to potentialities, or to a future like ours.
2.3.1 Appeals to immaterial minds or souls
Do humans have immaterial minds or souls that are the basis of all their mental states and capacities? The answer is that this is a deeply implausible view, since there are facts about human beings, and other animals, that provide strong evidence for the hypothesis that the categorical basis for all mental states and capacities lies in the brain. First of all, there are extensive correlations between the behavioral capacities of different animals and the neural structures present in their brains. Secondly, the gradual maturation of the brain of a human being is accompanied by a corresponding increase in his or her intellectual capabilities. Thirdly, damage to the brain, due either to external trauma, or to stroke, results in impairment of one's cognitive capacities, and the nature of the impairment is correlated with the part of the brain that was damaged. As I have argued elsewhere (Tooley et al. 2009, 15–19), these facts, and many others, receive a very straightforward explanation given the hypothesis that mental capacities have as their basis appropriate neural circuitry, whereas, on the other hand, they would be both unexplained, and deeply puzzling, if mental capacities had their basis not in the brain, but in some immaterial substance.
2.3.2 Appeals to potentialities
Consider fully active potentialities, understood as states of affairs inevitably leading to a certain result in the absence of outside interference, and consider the thesis that the destruction of a fully active potentiality for the emergence of a neo‐Lockean person is seriously wrong. Elsewhere I have offered several arguments against this principle (2009, 42–51). Here is one of the simpler arguments.
Suppose artificial wombs have been perfected, and there is a device containing an unfertilized human egg cell and a human spermatozoon, where if the device is not interfered with, fertilization will result, and the fertilized human egg cell will be transferred to an artificial womb, from which will emerge, in nine months' time, a healthy newborn human. Such a situation involves not merely an “almost active” potentiality for personhood – as in the case of a fertilized human egg cell on its own – but, rather, a fully active potentiality for personhood. To turn off this device, then, thereby allowing the unfertilized egg cell to die, would involve the destruction of an active potentiality for personhood. Consequently, that action would be seriously wrong if the above, fully active potentiality principle were correct. The action of turning off the device, however, is not morally wrong. Therefore it is not wrong to destroy an active potentiality for personhood.
2.3.3 The appeal to a future like ours
One of the most discussed and reprinted papers on abortion is Don Marquis’s “Why Abortion is Immoral.” In that article, Marquis contends that what makes it wrong to kill something is that thing’s having a future like ours.
One objection to this view is that whether something has a future like ours is a matter of that thing’s potentialities, so Marquis’s view is open to all of the objections that tell against any view that appeals to potentialities.
A second objection involves the idea of the “complete reprogramming” of the mind of a human animal – where all of that human animal’s current memories are replaced by totally different, apparent memories, and, similarly, whatever other mental states and traits that may be crucial for personal identity, such as one’s personality traits, are also replaced by completely different ones. The neo‐Lockean person would not survive such reprogramming, but the human animal would do so, and would have a future like ours. Moreover, if the neo‐Lockean person that initially existed had traits making for an unhappy life, whereas the neo‐Lockean person who existed after the reprogramming had traits conducive to a very good life, the reprogramming would have enabled the human animal in question to have a better future like ours. The question, accordingly, is how Marquis’s deprivation account of the wrongness of killing can explain how such complete reprogramming of a human’s mind is morally wrong.
My basic claims are then, first, that such “reprogramming” of the mind of a human animal is morally just as wrong as killing a human animal, and secondly, that the wrongness of such reprogramming cannot be explained in terms of depriving an animal – as contrasted with a neo‐Lockean person – of certain future goods.
2.3.4 Against human organ banks?
The objection to the creation of human organ banks is that, just as in the case of the killing human embryos used either to produce stems cells or for scientific research, one is violating the rights of an individual by damaging its brain. The arguments in support of this claim, however, are the arguments just considered, and found wanting.
3 Cloning to Produce Persons
Let us now turn to the question of whether the use of cloning to produce future persons is in principle morally acceptable or not. In this section, I shall first focus on the question whether such cloning is intrinsically wrong. Then I shall consider whether cloning to produce persons is wrong instead because of its consequences.
3.1 Is cloning that aims at producing future persons intrinsically wrong?
Let us begin by considering the two lines of argument that Dan Brock (1998, 151–5) thought were crucial. The first argument appeals to what might initially be described as the right of a person to be a unique individual, but which, in the end, must be characterized instead as the right of a person to a genetically unique nature. The second argument then appeals to the idea that a person has a right to a future that is, in a certain sense, open.
3.1.1 Does a person have a right to a genetically unique nature?
Many people feel that being a unique individual is important, and the basic thrust of this first attempt to show that cloning aimed at producing persons is intrinsically wrong involves the idea that the uniqueness of individuals would be impaired in some way by cloning. In response, I think that one might very well question whether uniqueness is important. If, for example, it turned out that there was, perhaps on some distant planet, a person who was qualitatively identical to oneself, down to the last detail,
