Cloning and Political Liberalism

Bonnie Stabile
George Mason University
School of Public Policy
PUBP 710
International Medical Policy
May 2003

Key Words: Cloning, Political Liberalism, Comprehensive Doctrines, Burdens of Judgment, Overlapping Consensus

Abstract: This paper examines the political and policy making challenges posed by human reproductive and therapeutic cloning by applying two facets of John Rawls’ construct of political liberalism – the burdens of judgment and overlapping consensus – to consider how such seemingly intractable controversies are resolved in a constitutional democracy. The analysis underscores the importance of both civic and scientific education to promoting the capacity of citizens to achieve what Rawls calls an overlapping consensus of reasonable comprehensive doctrines.

Purpose

This paper proposes to examine the policy predicament posed by human cloning through the lens of political liberalism to consider how such controversies can be reasonably resolved in a constitutional democracy.  Cloning is one of the most complex and controversial issues of our time.  Governments now in the early stages of crafting cloning policies find the process confounded both by the complexity of the science involved and the panoply of deeply felt moral and ethical responses it has provoked.  The cloning conundrum is characterized by polarized political views and personal opinions running the gamut from confused to dogmatic.  In the face of such intractable and divisive social controversies, citizens sometimes wonder how the convictions of those on different sides of the isle can ever be reconciled to create policies palatable to both, and whether the virulent debates of those with starkly opposing views threaten to tear at the fabric of social concord. 

John Rawls suggests that, “we turn to political philosophy when our shared political understandings… break down, and equally when we are torn within ourselves.” [1]   In the face of particularly thorny political problems, a return to relevant philosophical roots suggests a framework for understanding how diverse views are contained or accommodated in a constitutional democracy.  Political liberalism tries to answer the very question that concerns us: “how is it possible that there can be a stable and just society whose free and equal citizens are deeply divided by conflicting and even incommensurable religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines?” [2]

Background

In this era of rapid scientific advancement, human cloning is but one of a plethora of technologies that holds both the threat and the promise of changing the world as we know it.  Cloning is particularly contentious, touching as it does on fundamental questions of what it is to be human and how contemporary families and communities ought to be configured.  The cloning controversy is concerned at its heart with determining what constitutes the beginning of human life.  Though technology has made it possible for us to glimpse human life in progressively earlier stages of development, society has not yet reached agreement on the standing of the early human embryo in the face of countervailing interests.  In this sense, it has been noted that the debate raging over human cloning mirrors “aspects of the debate over abortion rights.” [3]   Where abortion is legal, the rights of women are considered to have priority over an embryo or fetus not capable of surviving independently outside of the womb.  Where therapeutic cloning is championed, the rights of individuals whose lives could be made better should the promise of therapeutic cloning come to fruition would take precedence over an asexually produced blastocyst embryo which is the product of somatic cell nuclear transfer, or cloning technology.    

Those who think cloning technology would change the world for the better tout the promise of “therapeutic” cloning to someday lead to cures for “a host of disease conditions” including “diabetes, liver and heart disease, neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson and Alzheimer disease, osteoporosis, blood cell disorders, muscular dystrophy, and injury caused by burns and trauma.” [4]   A very few would even welcome it as a cure of last resort for infertility. [5]   Detractors warn that therapeutic cloning could too easily lead to the illegal use of embryos for reproductive purposes, [6] which virtually no society condones at this time in light of unresolved questions of safety, efficacy and ethics. Since therapeutic cloning involves the creation of cloned human embryos for the purpose of using their stem cells to regenerate diseased or damaged tissue, allowing research on the technique could introduce human embryos as a commodity into a market incapable of preventing the clandestine implantation of cloned embryos for reproductive purposes.   Even if their use were successfully restricted to research, the destruction of embryos for their stem cells (derived during the blasotocyst stage, when the embryos consists of between 64 and 200 cells [7] ) would still be an anathema to many.  Critics who fear that cloning and other biotechnologies will bring about a “posthuman future” where social relations and human nature are fundamentally altered [8] seem hopelessly at odds with advocates of scientific freedom and those seeking cures for a multitude of debilitating diseases.  So, to the many intractable moral, ethical and scientific challenges posed by human cloning can be added the political challenge it presents as citizens with divergent views struggle to gain priority in the policymaking process.

Methodology

This analysis will apply two facets of John Rawls’ construct of political liberalism to a consideration of the cloning controversy.  Since the philosophical construct of political liberalism is intricate and extensive and the space for this analysis is limited, it will focus on two pertinent aspects of political liberalism.  The first is drawn from the first stage of Rawls’ “exposition of justice as fairness” – the cornerstone of political liberalism – “as a freestanding view addressed to” the question just posed: “how is it possible that there can be a stable and just society whose free and equal citizens are deeply divided by conflicting and even incommensurable religious, philosophical and moral doctrines?” [9]   The first stage details the answer to this question by describing the “basic structure” of such a society as one regulated by a shared political conception of justice serving as “the basis of public reason in debates about political questions when constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice are at stake.” [10]   While ideas of the reasonable and the rational are fundamental to this basic structure, certain limits to public reason – described as “burdens of judgment” - are acknowledged. These burdens of judgment outline key “sources, or causes, of disagreement between reasonable persons.” [11]   A utopian conception, political liberalism depends upon actors who are not only rational, but who are, perhaps more importantly, reasonable.  Reasonable people are defined as those who “take into account the consequences of their actions on others’ well-being” and “can cooperate with others on terms all can accept.” [12]   The fact that political liberalism admits of six significant and weighty “burdens of judgment” even with rational, reasonable actors as a given can seem cause for skepticism that such a society can exist.  The case of cloning offers an illustration of just how burdensome those burdens of judgment can be.

The second facet of political liberalism employed in this analysis is drawn from the “second stage of the exposition” which “considers how the well-ordered democratic society of justice as fairness may establish and preserve unity and stability given the reasonable pluralism characteristic of it.” [13]   The concept of “overlapping consensus of reasonable comprehensive doctrines” provides assurance that even in the face of controversial and divisive issues such as cloning, “a well-ordered society can be unified and stable.” [14]   A reasonable comprehensive doctrine is defined as “an exercise of theoretical reason… covering “the major religious, philosophical and moral aspects of human life” which employs both theoretical and practical reason in balancing conflicting values, and “normally belongs to, or draws upon, a tradition of thought or doctrine.” [15]   Where it is possible for such doctrines to overlap, though they may endorse many disparate conceptions of the good, is upon their shared political conception, endorsed by “each from its own point of view.” [16]   The case of cloning, characterized by conflicting comprehensive doctrines, may ultimately be resolved in the realm of this “most reasonable basis of social unity” and “basic idea of political liberalism” [17] : overlapping consensus.

Discussion

In order to understand the concept of overlapping consensus as it applies to the cloning controversy, it is essential to first outline who holds the reasonable comprehensive doctrines expected to overlap in order for consensus to be achieved in accordance with the model of political liberalism.  These doctrines, though strictly delineated, nevertheless allow for consensus because, according to Rawls’ model, they are reasonable and find agreement on a political conception of justice.  Though beset by onerous burdens of judgments, overlapping consensus of reasonable comprehensive doctrines is seen as possible within the framework of political liberalism.

Comprehensive Doctrines

With political liberalism as a framework, stakeholders in the cloning policy process can best be described as those individuals who subscribe to the different comprehensive doctrines that espouse the various views and values fueling the debate.  A fully comprehensive doctrine “includes conceptions of what is of value in human life, and ideals of personal character, as well as ideals of friendship and of familial and associational relationships, and much else that is to inform our conduct.” [18]   Even when a doctrine is only partially comprehensive, comprising “a number of, but by no means all, nonpolitical values and virtues and is rather loosely articulated,” [19] it is taken to play the same role in the framework as a fully comprehensive doctrine in shaping the mind set of its adherents.             

Religious groups are perhaps the easiest to see in terms of subscribing to comprehensive doctrines, and of course several religious groups figure prominently in the cloning debate.  The Roman Catholic Church, whose doctrine advocates the respect “of human life in all its stages” [20] and currently teaches that life begins at the moment of conception and ends with natural death, seeks a ban on cloning research for either reproductive or therapeutic purposes.  On this issue, the Catholic Church is in accord with conservative Protestant denominations – including evangelicals and fundamentalists – who believe that “the creation and destruction of human embryos for research purposes is immoral.” [21]   Jewish theologians, on the other hand, can be said to support the concepts of both reproductive and therapeutic cloning, citing their potential to relieve or heal suffering from disease – “a strong imperative in Jewish tradition.” [22]   Also, “unlike most Christian denominations, Jews” give status neither “to a fetus during its first 40 days of gestation” nor to “an embryo outside of a woman.” [23]   Last year, “the nation’s largest Orthodox Jewish organizations declared their support… for allowing scientists to clone human embryos for medical research, breaking with conservative Christian groups” on the topic. [24]            

Philosophical and moral doctrines are also defined as comprehensive doctrines, though they are more likely to be partially comprehensive and somewhat more difficult to conceptualize or categorize.  Figuring prominently in the cloning policy arena are proponents of science and research whose worldview seems significantly shaped by the conviction that scientific means most often lead to morally justifiable ends.  Those sharing this philosophy virtually all support therapeutic cloning and some might be willing to consider the prospect of pursuing reproductive cloning should the science someday give reason for encouragement in this regard.  (At present it is believed that techniques employed to successfully clone “mice, sheep and other animals…‘will have to be modified’ to make it work on primates, including humans.” [25] )   Doctors’ and researchers’ groups, such as the American Medical Association, the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and patient advocacy groups, such as the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and the Parkinson’s Action Network are but a few of those more traditionally defined as interest groups who could nonetheless be said to embrace a pro-science comprehensive doctrine.                     

Environmentalists could also be said to share a philosophy arguably definable as a partially comprehensive doctrine.  Their doctrine advocates protection and preservation of the earth, respect for all living things and balance in nature.  Where biotechnology is concerned, they oppose everything from “genetically modified crops (known derisively as ‘Frankenfoods’)” to “genetic enhancement (inserting supposedly desirable genes into embryos)” and human cloning of any type. [26]   Environmental groups such as the Friends of the Earth, the Sierra Club and Greenpeace , U.S.A. oppose “not research on cloned embryos but what may come next: the genetic modification and enhancement of humans.” [27]            

These are just a few of the reasonable comprehensive doctrines whose views and value judgments play a role in the cloning policymaking process.  “A society may also contain unreasonable and irrational, and even mad, comprehensive doctrines.  In their case the problem is to contain them so that they do not undermine the unity and justice of society.” [28]   The Raelians, a “sect that believes space travelers created the human race by cloning” and has made unsubstantiated claims “that it had produced the first human clone” [29] may be cloning’s most likely candidate for a crazy, though so far relatively harmless, doctrine. As for the abundance of reasonable comprehensive doctrines, the fact that they are so disparate and seemingly irreconcilable is not perceived by political liberalism as a “disaster but rather as the natural outcome of activities of human reason under enduring free institutions.” [30]

Reason and its Limits: The Burdens of Judgement

Political liberalism expects that “a modern democratic society” will be characterized by a pluralism of comprehensive doctrines, which, though incompatible, can coexist because they are reasonable. [31]   “The ideal of public reason,” so central to political liberalism, “does not often lead to general agreement of views, nor should it.” [32]   Indeed, Rawls says that the expectation that “social unity and concord requires agreement” on some particular doctrine is a hallmark of “intolerance,” the weakening of which “helps to clear the way for liberal institutions.” [33]    It is expected that reasonable people, defined above as those who “take into account the consequences of their actions on others’ well-being” and who “can cooperate with others on terms all can accept,” [34] will employ public reasoning when “some political decision must be made, as with legislators enacting laws and judges deciding cases.” [35]   In such circumstances, “all must be able to reasonably endorse the process by which” that political decision is made. [36]            

There are, of course, limits to the reconciliation that can be achieved by public reason. [37]   Rawls describes these limits as deriving from several broad categories, including “those resulting from citizens’ conflicting comprehensive doctrines… and those resulting from the burdens of judgment.” [38]   This analysis will focus on the burdens of judgment – which are encountered even when those judging are fully reasonable. [39]   The cloning policymaking process and forum for public consensus are rife with such burdens.            

The first burden of judgment occurs when “the evidence – empirical and scientific – bearing on the case is conflicting and complex, and thus hard to assess and evaluate.” [40]   The science of cloning is clearly complex.  It begins most often with a process known as “somatic cell nuclear transfer.”  Whether for reproductive or therapeutic purposes, the process begins by “taking the nucleus from a patient’s cell and implanting it into a human egg cell that (has) had it nucleus removed.” [41]   The resulting egg cell with its new nucleus is then stimulated “to divide to produce a blastocyst embryo.” [42]   For therapeutic purposes, the cells from this embryo are then coaxed “to produce stem cell lines… Such stem cells are unspecialized cells that can develop into almost all kinds of body cells” to  “regenerate damaged tissues.” [43]   For reproductive purposes, the resulting blastocyst would be “placed into a uterus” and allowed to continue developing “with the intent of creating a newborn.” [44]   Neither therapeutic nor reproductive cloning has yet to be achieved in humans.  “Despite optimistic statements about curing diseases, almost all researchers, when questioned, confess that such accomplishments are more dream than reality.” [45]   Because cloning is still a nascent technology, scientists themselves are in the process of assessing and evaluating the science.  Policymakers and the public most often must struggle to make sense of it all.           

The second burden of judgment states that, “even where we are fully in agreement about the kinds of considerations that are relevant, we may disagree about their weight, and so arrive at different judgments.” [46]   While most agree that the status of the human embryo is the pivotal consideration where cloning is concerned, various reasonable actors are of differing opinions as to the nature of that status and the weight it should be accorded.  Should the potential of the human embryo to develop into human life preclude its use for research purposes?  Or would it be wrong not to pursue the “promising new lines of inquiry made possible by embryonic stem cells?” [47]                    

Third, to the “extent all our concepts… are vague and subject to hard cases… this indeterminacy means that we must rely on judgment and interpretation… within some range… where reasonable persons may differ.” [48]   Definitional distinctions resulting from varying interpretations that come into play in the cloning debate create a particularly vexing burden of judgment.  While the term “therapeutic cloning,” favored by stem cell researchers, highlights the potentially curative properties of the procedure, “human embryonic cloning,” favored by abortion opponents, underscores its origins. [49]   “Nuclear transplantation (or transferal) to produce human pluripotent stem cell lines,” a phrase favored by Stanford researchers, takes the cloning terminology off of the table all together, while the product of this procedure is emphatically denoted a “cloned human embryo” by the President’s Council on Bioethics. [50]   To some, the product of nuclear transfer is none other than a cloned human embryo; to others, this product of parthenogenesis is a replication of something other than a new life form altogether. [51]   The vast array of conflicting value-laden terminology exacerbates the challenges posed by the complexity of the science and the weighing of relevant moral and ethical considerations, making identification, interpretation and judgment of the facts difficult, and divergent judgments by reasonable people more likely.                

The fourth burden of judgment is essentially a restatement of the adage “where you stand depends upon where you sit.”  Given citizens’ different life experiences, ethnicities, social groups and work experience, it is natural “for their judgments to diverge, at least to some degree, on many if not most cases of any significant complexity.” [52]   This source of diverging judgments is distinct from conflicting comprehensive doctrines, which are in a category by themselves.  Though they also result in divergent judgments, conflicting comprehensive doctrines have the values held by citizens at their heart, while this particular burden of judgment results from their different stations in life.  For instance, where cloning is concerned, the poor may be less inclined to seek, or be able to afford, medical therapies derived from cloning research should any such therapies eventually be realized.  Their necessarily more immediate concern with the availability of affordable health care now will color their interest in or support for research on hypothetical cloning therapies in the face of a very real and pressing need.  Social justice is just one of the many ethical concerns raised by cloning. [53]   It is also just one of the many considerations raised by the fourth burden of judgment.                

The fact that “there are different kinds of normative considerations of different force on both sides of an issue,” making it difficult to form “an overall assessment,” constitutes the fifth burden of judgment. [54]   Conservatives defending the virtue and normality of the nuclear family fear that cloning could become just another venue for the dismantling of traditional family structures, and so oppose cloning of any kind.  If the dreaded slippery slope should ever lead to the reality of reproductive cloning, they “favor limiting cloning to intact, heterosexual families.” [55]   On the other side of the issue, homosexuals wishing to become parents might find cloning an appealing way to parent a child to whom they exclusively have genetic ties and would thus favor the advancement of cloning research.  It is hard to imagine any reconciliation of normative views between these two opposite camps.                

Finally, “any system of social institutions is limited in the values it can admit so that some selection made from the full range of moral and political values might be realized.” [56]   This sixth burden of judgment points out that we are “forced to select among cherished values, or when we hold several… we must restrict each in view of the requirements of others.” [57]   This sometimes results in bargains that leave participants feeling compromised.  If discontent is deep enough, the issue is likely to percolate up through the political process again until a more satisfactory compromise is achieved.President Bush’s August 2001 decision to allow federally funded research on existing stem cell lines, but banning the use of federal funds to establish new lines, created discontent on both sides of the issue.  Those finding the use of human embryos for research unpalatable could still be offended, and researchers found themselves bridling at restrictions on their scientific work.  Since the moral status of human embryos remains unresolved and recent scientific developments provide further evidence that the inability to “use the newly derived, latest and best cell lines… puts us at a disadvantage,” the administration’s policy is sure to be reexamined. [58]                 

While it is easy to find in the burdens of judgment cause for despair that the policy process will ever reach resolution, Rawls actually defines “the willingness to recognize the burdens of judgment and to accept their consequences for the use of public reason in directing the legitimate exercise of political power in a constitutional regime” as one of the two “basic aspects of the reasonable.” [59]   The other is “the willingness to propose fair terms of cooperation and to abide by them provided others do.” [60]   Thus, rather than acting as an impediment to the principles of justice, the burdens of judgment are integral to their basic structure.

Overlapping Consensus

The first stage of the exposition put forth by Rawls in Political Liberalism lays down the structure of a society in which public reason prevails, in response to the question, “how it is possible for there to exist over time a just and stable society of free and equal citizens, who remain profoundly divided by reasonable religious, philosophical and moral doctrines?” The second stage describes the mechanisms that make it possible.  In a word – or two – it is achieved by overlapping consensus.  This overlapping consensus of the reasonable comprehensive doctrines held by citizens occurs in the realm of the political, not on the more limited terrain of one or another comprehensive doctrine alone.                  

The concept of overlapping consensus rests upon the presumption of reasonable pluralism.  It is expected that reasonable, rational individuals in a society will naturally embrace different doctrines and reach different conclusions on matters of importance.  But these same reasonable, rational citizens are also understood to share a political conception of justice in which no one comprehensive doctrine can be preeminent.  So Roman Catholics, Protestants and Jews, and environmentalists, scientists and their supporters endorse the power of the government and its laws as a collective body of free and equal citizens living according to the liberal principle of legitimacy, whereby they endorse the use of political power exercised in accordance with a constitution agreed upon by all.                   

If we are to accept that political questions can be resolved “by appeal to political values alone” rather than reliance on the dictums of diverse comprehensive doctrines, then political values must have “sufficient weight to override all other values that may come in conflict with them.” [61]   Given the sampling of comprehensive doctrines above and the myriad deeply held values intrinsic to them, this seems almost too much to ask. Yet Rawls offers reassurance that “political values are very great values and hence not easily overridden;” in the words of John Stuart Mill, they provide “the very groundwork of our existence.” [62]   The virtues of political cooperation make a constitutional regime possible and constitute part of society’s political capital by underpinning an array of values of justice including “the values of equal political and civil liberty; fair equality of opportunity; the values of economic reciprocity; the social bases of mutual respect between citizens” and the values of pubic reason. [63]                     

The construct of political liberalism describes citizens as “moral agents” with a “capacity for a conception of justice and a capacity for a conception of the good.” [64]   The moral sensibility that imbues the reasonable comprehensive doctrines embraced by citizens also infuses their political conception.  While some moral doctrines contain an element not admitting of compromise, [65] political liberalism “does not aim to replace comprehensive doctrines, religious or nonreligious, but intends to be equally distinct from both and, it hopes, acceptable to both.” [66]   The overlapping consensus of reasonable doctrines necessary for political liberalism to thrive finds a fit between the political conception, in itself a moral conception, [67] and the comprehensive views of the citizens sharing that political conception.  Public recognition of the great values of the political virtues informs that vital consensus.                     

While the burdens of judgment as illustrated by the cloning controversy seem cause for concern that reconciliation among reasonable views might ever be achieved, their very existence also underscores the need for political liberalism, which “takes to heart the absolute depth of that irreconcilable latent conflict.” [68]   Without it, how could such radically distinct views peaceably coexist?  A shared political conception informed by public reason and achieved by an overlapping consensus of reasonable comprehensive doctrines ultimately makes it possible for a just and free society to exist “under conditions of deep doctrinal conflict with no prospect of resolution.” [69]

Policy Recommendations

An examination of the cloning controversy through the lens of political liberalism suggests three courses of action to assist in mitigating the potential of such controversies to create social unrest.  The first, brought to mind by the model of political liberalism, is to initiate measures to strengthen civic education.  Only if the virtues and values of the shared political conception of constitutional democracy are reiterated and renewed by each generation can it hope to endure.  The second, suggested by the scientific complexity of cloning and other modern technologies, is to promote the virtues of science education and ensure that it keeps pace with scientific advancement.  A public incapable of understanding the dramatic and at times morally confounding advances of modern science will find it challenging to reach consensus of any kind on issues about which it is ill informed.  The third is to carefully consider the international implications of making cloning policy.   Though Rawls’ construct of political liberalism assumes a closed model – taken to mean an individual nation or society – we are all, it has frequently been noted of late, citizens of the world – part of a global community.  International boundaries are increasingly incapable of containing scientific technologies; those banned in one nation may be easily accessible to its citizens in another.  The benefits realized or ill effects inflicted on society by cloning technology or any other scientific advancement will ultimately not be limited to the residents of isolated countries.  A new model of political philosophy will be needed to conceptualize how consensus might be achieved on an international level to use the promise of scientific advancement to the best advantage of all people.

Conculsion

When particularly divisive, intractable topics appear on the political agenda, it is natural for some hand wringing to occur over whether consensus might ever be achieved.  At such times it is useful to reflect on theories of political philosophy that may offer reassurance of the resilience of our constitutional democracy, provide a framework for more in depth analysis of the issue at hand, and perhaps even suggest relevant policy recommendations.  Though political liberalism as outlined by Rawls is a utopian conception based on an elegant model at times somewhat removed from reality, it nonetheless provides a framework for classifying and explicating sources of controversy – the burdens of judgment - and outlines a road map towards reconciliation achieved by overlapping consensus.

References