Human Cloning - A Threat to Family Values?

A society (such as a government) grants rights to enable its citizens to flourish. Citizens free to pursue their goals will enrich themselves and those around them. The value of a society grows and expands in concert with the expanding value of individual and family lives. In contrast, those societies and governments which limit the freedoms of their members are stagnant or, at best, restricted in their scope.

However, in a free society such as the United States, citizens are not free to do whatever they please, whenever they please. Responsibility is implicit within the gift of being free, and one's actions are constrained to the extent that they interfere with the rights of others. Additionally, certain norms of conduct form the foundation upon which society is built. It is in the interest of the state to preserve these norms and to prohibit actions and activities that place these norms in jeopardy.

One such norm is that of family life. It is often said that the family is the bedrock of American society. But the constituents of family life have changed markedly during the past 50 years. The traditional American family, consisting of a father and a mother who are married and live in the same house with their children, is no longer the standard. Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, real-life parents of early rock-and-roll crooner Ricky Nelson and stars of the iconic television comedy, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, would scarcely recognize the many forms that make up the landscape of today's American family life. The Nelsons typified the nuclear family, but that form has been obliterated and remade.

Fifty percent of American marriages end in divorce. Two-parent families are the exception rather than the norm. Many American children grow up in a single-parent home, usually that of the mother. Other children have same-sex parents and are raised by two mommies or two daddies. In the last 25 years of the 20th century, the traditional nuclear family consistently faded from view.

Thus, when a commentator decries a new technology or social interaction as a threat to traditional family values, it's important to observe that the entity threatened now holds minority status. Traditional family values are no longer a load-bearing wall in the foundation of society. Family values continue to be that support, but the concept of "traditional" is a moving target. Those uncomfortable with change may wish to cling to their notions of what is meaningful and what is right, but those notions are not germane to the interests of society as a whole.

Human cloning (HC) will most definitely overturn the cart of traditional family values. We need to be much more concerned with how HC will impact our understanding of the family itself.

David Lemberg, M.S. in Bioethics, Albany Medical College, May 2010
Consultant, Author, Speaker. Research interests - health care and health care policy, reproductive technologies, genetics and genomics, K-12 science education
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