Crossing boundaries: virtue or vice for the twenty-first century?

The cloning of "Dolly" the sheep in 1997 is now old news. The ability to reproduce individuals through somatic cell nuclear transfer has been accomplished in at least five species, the latest being that of the cat. In November 2001, scientists at Advanced Cell Technology, Inc. in Massachusetts claimed that they had successfully cloned a human embryo, which had developed to the 8-cell stage. (1) Debates over genetic research and manipulation have moved well beyond the initial shock of Dolly's advent onto the scene and the prospect of human clones populating the earth. Nevertheless, the case of Dolly illustrates the visceral reaction--sometimes called the Yuk-factor--that arises when "natural" boundaries are violated. (2)

In his 1998 article, "A Cabbit in Sheep's Clothing: Exploring the Sources of Our Moral Disquiet about Cloning," Timothy Renick explores the reasons why so many have had feelings of repulsion at the notion of reproductive human cloning. (3) His contention is that the vociferous outpouring of opposition to human cloning after Dolly went beyond moral reasoning. Using the work of Jeffrey Stout on "moral abomination" and of Mary Douglas on "purity and danger," he comes to the conclusion that human cloning elicits the Yuk-factor because it challenges our very notions of reality, posing a "cosmological threat" more than a moral dilemma. (4) The issue is not over family values as such, since

This essay is taken from the authors Presidential Address to the Canadian Theological Society, Toronto, May 26, 2002. new forms of family have been emerging over the last century without such visceral repulsion. Instead, Renick argues, the set of roles and identifies that is at stake is grounded at a very primal level. These roles and identities are challenged at a depth that other modifications of family relations have not touched. Consider the following:

If Jennifer gives birth to a clone of herself named Rachel, then Jennifer is clearly Rachel's birth mother. And if Jennifer raises Rachel herself, then she is clearly Rachel's social mother as well. In genetic terms, however, Jennifer is not Rachel's mother, she's Rachel's identical twin. This means that Rachel's genetic parents are the same as Jennifer's genetic parents. (5)

If this isn't complicated enough, Renick brings in the extended family. Jennifer's mother becomes both the mother and grandmother of Rachel while Rachel's aunt (Jennifer's sister) is both her aunt and her sister. Rachel and her aunt/sister will have the same genetic parents.

Renick further insists that human cloning challenges the very line between self and other. This is the stuff of science fiction--the F.B.I. agent on the trail of a serial killer follows the leads to a seedy apartment where, when the door opens, he is confronted with--himself. (6) This is Renick's point: it is the cosmological threat--the fact that the clone is both self and other--that so shakes our foundations. "Who 'I' am is brought into question. Once again it is the visceral experience more than the intellectual concept which frightens; brought face to face with one's clone, one is left literally shaken by the experience of temporarily losing hold on who one is." (7)

Here we are at the point of boundary crossing. The Yuk-factor is at heart a visceral resistance to crossing boundaries, identities, and roles that we hold dear. Our very identities and cosmologies are challenged. Renick compares this revulsion to other accepted taboos, such as those against bestiality and necrophilia. Intimacy between man and beast, between living and dead--such boundary crossing is considered pathological at best. For example, the recent discovery of over 340 human bodies at a crematorium in Georgia elicits all the revulsion one could want. Though Ray Brent Marsh is charged with 200 counts of "theft by deception" most of the public is more shocked by this man's desire to harbor human remains than they are incensed at the injustice of his "theft." (8)

In this light, gut-level reactions, the Yuk-factor, seem to be authentic arbiters of moral value. And yet.... Renick recognizes that not all aspects of our dearly held cosmologies are valid. "The cosmological categories embraced by societies and individuals are not necessarily right, and they certainly are not static." (9) Renick cites the example of his great aunt, born and raised in the American South, who still recoils at the sight of an interracial couple. Here we have a case of boundary crossing that challenges the roles and identities embedded deeply in the psyches of many. For others, such boundary crossing is a sign of liberation, reversing illegitimate racial boundaries of an earlier generation. In this case, the Yuk-factor arises from a distorted affectivity that needs to be converted.

Thus Renick leaves us without a clear position on human reproductive cloning. He, instead, concludes: "[W]e must ask whether cloning is more like necrophilia or interracial dating." (10) In other words, how do we discern which boundaries arise from prejudice and need to be overcome, and which circumscribe areas that ought not to be violated?