Commentary by Jeremy Rifkin on PRI’s Marketplace (January, 2001)

From time immemorial, we have thought of the birth of our progeny as a gift of God or a beneficent nature. The coming together of sperm and egg represents a moment of utter surrender to forces outside our control. I think that’s why most people have an almost instinctual repulsion to cloning. I think it’s because deep down they sense that it’s the beginning of a new journey where the gift of life is steadily marginalized and eventually abandoned altogether. In its place, the new progeny becomes the ultimate shopping experience: designed in advanced, produced to specification, and purchased in the biological marketplace. But even with these misgivings, researchers at fertility clinics say they’re already besieged by requests to clone. And if embryologist Ian Wilmut’s work with sheep is any indication, there’s no reason to think that ordering up designer babies won’t soon be a reality. But as we welcome the dawn of a commercial eugenic civilization, a “brave new world” where new technologies speed the process of improving our offspring, we invite a new peril. It’s a peril that should pull us back from the intoxicating thought that each person can become a private god and make offspring in his or her own image. It’s a threat that’s never talked about by scientists, ethicists, biotech entrepreneurs, or politicians. In a society where more and more people clone and eventually customize their genotype to design specifications and engineering standards, how are we likely to regard the child who isn’t cloned or customized? What about the child who’s born with a disability? Will the rest of society view that child with tolerance, or come to see the child as an error in the genetic code, in short, a defective product? Indeed, future generations might become far less tolerant of those who are not engineered and who deviate from the genetic standards and norms adhered to in the best practices of the bio-industrial marketplace. If that were to happen, we might lose the most precious gift of all: the human capacity to empathize with one another. When we empathize with another human being, it’s because we feel and experience their vulnerability, their frailties and suffering, their unique struggle to claim their humanity. But in a world that comes to expect perfection in its offspring, can empathy really survive? Human cloning represents the ultimate Faustian bargain. In our desire to become the architects of our own evolution, we risk the very real possibility of losing our humanity. –In Philadelphia, this is Jeremy Rifkin for Marketplace.

–Jeremy Rifkin is a Fellow at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and author of The Biotech Century, The Age of Access, and The End of Work.

Critique of Rifkin’s Commentary on Marketplace

By Dwayne Mulder, Critical Thinking

In his January, 2001 commentary on Public Radio International’s show Marketplace, Jeremy Rifkin’s thesis seems to be that we should not pursue research on cloning. He does not, however, express this in a clear thesis statement. He says that the “peril” of what might result from cloning should pull us back “from the intoxicating thought that each person can become a private god and make offspring in his or her own image.” This is merely emotive language. He should have stated more clearly that he thinks we should pull back from research on cloning.

This is a poor thesis, even if it had been expressed more clearly. It is a poor thesis because it is unrealistic. We cannot pull back from research on cloning. The research will go on. Human cloning will happen. The only relevant question is how we will handle it when it becomes a reality. Rifkin does not give any good advice on how to live well with human cloning. His thesis to pull back from research is merely head-in-the-sand thinking.

His supporting arguments all commit the Slippery Slope Fallacy. By claiming that research on cloning is “the beginning of a new journey,” Rifkin starts down the slippery slope of treating the worst-case scenario about the future as if it were likely to happen. He makes definite claims only about what might happen if we are able to clone humans. Claims about what might happen are extremely weak, and hence fail to support any thesis about whether to pursue cloning research. He also uses many rhetorical questions, which are question-begging and serve only to raise merely possible worst-case scenarios. It is true that cloning research might lead down a slippery slope to the disastrous consequence of losing our humanity, but Rifkin says nothing to make us believe that we are at all likely to lose our humanity in a future with human cloning. He deals only with the slimmest of possibilities and says nothing about probability. Hence, he seems to have no understanding of the nature of inductive argumentation. His reference to “the very real possibility of losing our humanity” at the end indicates his deep confusion. He uses language that makes it seem that possibility comes in varying degrees, since he assumes that there is a difference between a possibility and a “very real possibility.” Possibility does not come in varying degrees, however. Probability comes in degrees, but Rifkin fails to indicate any significant degree of probability for his conclusions. The phrase “very real possibility” is supposed to make his readers feel as if he has made the case for a significant probability when in fact he has only presented possibilities.

Rifkin’s use of language is highly manipulative and deceptive. He presents mere possibilities of future horrors, like bad science-fiction movies, to trigger exaggerated fears in his audience. He intends these exaggerated fears to lead his readers to accept his proposal. Toward the same end, he uses much language that is highly emotive but low on actual cognitive content. He refers to babies in the future resulting from cloning as “designer babies.” This term is supposed to get his readers to go along with the idea that cloned babies will be “designed to specifications,” although Rifkin produces no argument supporting that conclusion. (Nor does he clarify exactly what that vague language is supposed to mean.) His reference to a Brave New World is also an emotional cheap shot meant to stir up irrational fears, without any supporting evidence, in his readers.

He says that Ian Wilmut’s work cloning Dolly the sheep indicates that ordering up designer babies will soon be a reality. Cloning sheep, however, indicates no such thing. Rifkin assumes that people will “order up designer babies” merely if it will be possible to do so. There are, however, many things that are technologically possible that people choose with good reason not to do.

He refers to a future in which “more and more people clone.” This phrase is vague, and Rifkin exploits that vagueness to his advantage. On a minimal interpretation, it is obviously true that more people will clone in the future, because no people are doing it now, so the number can’t be any less. Emotively, however, the phrase gets passed off on the audience with the stronger interpretation that great numbers of people in the future will choose to use cloning technology. Rifkin provides no reason whatsoever to accept that claim.

His arguments are question-begging in a number of places. He states near the beginning that most people have an almost instinctual repulsion to cloning, but we are left to wonder how he is supposed to know what most people feel. Further, even if a majority of people feel this way, this indicates nothing about the actual advisability or morality of pursuing cloning research. Near the end of the essay, Rifkin refers to a future in which we come to expect perfection in our offspring, again with no supporting argument. His fundamental question-begging assumption is that humans are nothing more than their genetic make-up. This assumption is the only way to explain why Rifkin ties cloning technology to the consequence of expecting perfection in our offspring. His assumption is ludicrous. If environmental factors play any part, it is absurd to expect perfection in our future offspring even if they are the product of cloning. Further, the individuals from which they are cloned will be far from perfect themselves. Hence, we will definitely not come to expect perfection in cloned offspring.

Rifkin does absolutely nothing to acknowledge any significant arguments in favor of cloning research. He makes no reference to the possibility of eliminating certain diseases and birth defects. (And he’s so fond of identifying possibilities!) He makes no reference to helping couples have biological offspring when no method other than cloning can help them. This failure to acknowledge any opposing arguments renders his entire commentary fundamentally question-begging.