Cloning and Germline Intervention: U.S. Perspectives

Presentation at The Within and Beyond Human Nature conference, Berlin, Germany 

Unlike selective abortion and PGD, the reproductive genetic procedures on which I'm going to focus today are not being used in doctors' offices and fertility clinics. No human child has been produced by means of germline engineering or reproductive cloning. But the discussion of these possibilities is well underway in the United States, and that discussion is itself already shaping our political values and social futures.

I'm going to try in the next few minutes to give you a quick overview of how germline engineering (or inheritable genetic modification) and reproductive cloning are being discussed in the U.S.

First a very brief description of the mainstream advocacy in the U.S. of these techniques of inheritable genetic modification-that is, for the production of "enhanced children," or what the U.S. media often call "designer babies."

Second, some comments on the challenges of convincing U.S. progressives and feminists that the adoption of these practices would pose grave threats to their own commitments to social justice and equality-and that opposing these procedures...