THE BIOETHICIST Leon R. Kass, who has been one of the most persistent opponents of human cloning, argues that we must ban it totally as a tactical step to head off the emergence of a truly horrible society something like that depicted in Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel Brave New World (1932). For Kass, it is not enough to ban reproductive cloning; to ensure that this cannot be done; we must also ban any creation of human embryos by somatic cell nuclear transfer, even for research or therapeutic purposes. In a lengthy article in the May 2001 issue of the New Republic, he argues that, should we take any other approach, we risk sliding into a Brave New World of eugenics and a “post-human” future. Kass is not alone in invoking the ghost of Huxley when discussing questions of public policy. Other thinkers commonly allude to the prospect of a “Brave New World” in relation to such biotechnological possibilities as human cloning and various kinds of genetic enhancement. To take only one of a multitude of examples, Bryan Appleyard’s main contribution to the debate is a book entitled Brave New Worlds: Staying Human in the Genetic Future (1999) (see my discussion of this in the September 1999 issue of Quadrant).
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