Human reproductive cloning is unethical because it undermines autonomy: commentary on Savulescu.

I believe that there is a personal right, ethically based, to individuality, autonomy, and identity. This right correlates with the right not to be seen primarily as a "means", but is more fundamental. Reproductive cloning crosses a significant boundary in removing the single most important feature of autonomy: the fact that each of us is genetically unique and individual. Our genetic identity is an essential part of this individuality, and it is our genetic differences that explain why societies which attempt to impose environmental conditioning to achieve uniformity have not succeeded. Identical twins are always raised in objection to this. Of course, the fact that nature gives outcomes does not mean that these outcomes are necessarily ethical if reproduced deliberately by man (for instance, there are several genetic syndromes where an infant is born without arms, but it would be unethical to reproduce these using assisted reproduction). However, I believe that in the context of a discussion on cloning it is more relevant that at the moment of conception the embryo is a single genetically unique individual with a mix of (more or less) randomly assorted maternal and paternal genomes combined in an individual way. The separation of twins into two individuals occurs during later embryonic development. Twins are unique and autonomous in their genetics. Even if they closely resemble each other, they do not resemble anyone else. To what extent are the attributes we normally associate with individuality-personality, intelligence , appearance-due to the unique genome of the individual? While it is not yet possible to make a definitive and quantitative statement about this, twin studies all show a very high concordance for behavioural traits between identical twins as compared to non-identical twins. 1 2 Genotype also determines many aspects of interaction between an individual and the environment, and parental genotype may also be related to the environment that is provided for children. The interpretation of these data is not simple, but I think most observers would agree that genotype is a major determinant of behaviour. The precise relationship between genetic uniqueness and autonomy deserves to be explored in greater detail elsewhere, since the two are not identical (genetic uniqueness is acquired at fertilisation, while autonomy arises somewhat later, associated with brain development). Suppose we examine cloning as an extreme form of human reproduction, and consider the cloning of 100,000 persons with an identical genotype because all are derived from …