If I had a reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa hanging over my sofa, I doubt very much that there would be a queue of people snaking round the corner, all waiting to have a look. Similarly, the copy of Michelangelo's David, standing in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence, doesn't draw a crowd of awed observers. No, their destination is the Accademia just up the road.
The reason for all the indifference to the statue in the square is obvious; with rare exceptions (such as Roman copies of Greek statues or works created to be in cathedrals or to stand outdoors), museums house originals - the real thing. Everything else is merely a copy, an imitation, a fake - a substitute with which we simply make do when the real thing is unavailable. A copy of a work of art is of lesser value both artistically and financially than the original. Whatever value it does possess lies not in its intrinsic character and characteristics but in the degree of its conformity to the prototype.
As we know, a clone would not, and could not, be a mere copy of its progenitor. Unfortunately, the idea of clones as copies has found a prominent place in our cloning conversations. Ian Wilmut, who headed the team that cloned Dolly the sheep, used the term early and often as he sought to demonstrate his revulsion at the idea of human reproductive cloning - at "copying people".
But people cannot be copied. Our mirror image will never come to life on our side of the looking glass. Reconstructing a new person using a single cell taken from a progenitor would duplicate only the genome. The clone would be a later-born identical twin. While the copying metaphor may lend itself more readily to clones than twins because, sequentially, the clone follows the progenitor, the term is as misleading applied to one as it is to the other. Perhaps the most profound and pernicious of the misunderstandings about cloning is that genetic identity is equivalent to personal identity.
To conceptualise cloning as copying inspires hopes and fears with no basis in fact. One such hope is that we can use biology to confer a kind of serial immortality on those who will one day die (as we all will) or on someone who has already died. The heartbroken and the bereaved are easy prey for would-be cloning entrepreneurs. Even false beliefs can have morally repugnant consequences. A clone created with resurrection in mind would be valued not for himself, but only for a high degree of conformity with his progenitor - conformity in personality, behaviours, talents, and perhaps even genius. He would lead a life in the shadow - forever compared, forever falling short.
In contrast, if human reproductive cloning could be done safely (and that is a big if), it could serve as a morally acceptable remedy for infertility, especially if both partners were affected. Similarly, cloning to replicate the genome of a sick child in order to produce a sibling with compatible bone marrow could be a morally legitimate option as long as the new child would be loved and cherished, and not viewed as merely a means to an end. Unfortunately, it is fiendishly difficult for the law to make distinctions based on motive.
As with babies created by IVF, cloning to produce a child for infertile parents would not result in diminished humanity. The mode of creation is morally irrelevant, as it is with respect to children conceived the old-fashioned way. There can be no clone in the cupboard to be raided for body parts when the need arises.
While making standardised copies can turn art into a commodity, parenthood achieved through cloning does not make commodities out of humans. But what if someone produced multiple clones of the same person and not just one? Why does this prospect seem so disturbing? Not because it would result in many people sharing one personal identity; it would not. Multiple clones are upsetting because they would not be viewed as children. Instead, they would be more like products, and their creators not really parents. How would one of these clones feel about being "a number"? Devalued, would be my guess.
Images of mass production of human clones evoke Huxley's Bokanovsky process that produced dehumanised, subnormal clones to perform tasks for which they were designed to be suited. While this vision will remain fantasy, it is deeply threatening to our sense of autonomy.
Perhaps some of our unease about cloning - about becoming a devalued copy or the template for one or 20 or 100 copies - has more real world roots. So many of the stereotypical associations that surround cloning (loss of individuality, control, uniqueness, and our essential humanity) seem all too applicable to the lives we lead. Especially for those of us who live in large cities, work for big companies and dress much the way other people do. We seem anonymous, in danger of not being appreciated for our uniqueness, in danger of not even being noticed. Many of our encounters are with people we don't know and will never know; these strangers certainly don't see us as individuals, as special. The fear of cloning resonates so powerfully because of our suspicions that, metaphorically speaking, we already are clones.
We all long to be one of a kind, with the ability to make our own choices, forge our own destiny, write our own autobiography. Would being a clone give us someone else's story to tell or retell, especially if, as the cliche has it, the book of life is written in our genes? No. A clone would have the same potential for an open future and an unencumbered ability to be an independent moral agent. We are, to use another cliche, far more than the sum of our genes. Imagine for a moment that the most crucial, transforming experience in your life had not happened. You did not lose a parent when you were a child. You did not go through a painful divorce. You did not meet a person on a train or aeroplane who somehow gave you a vision of a different path in life - to go to law school or medical school, to become a missionary or aid worker. You never heard that political speech that thrilled you and sent you right off to campaign for a candidate. Imagine that whatever it was did not happen. Is there any doubt that you would have had a very, very different life?
Of course, we are profoundly affected by our genetic inheritance but, by and large, genes are about predisposition, not predestination. There is only one Mona Lisa. And there will never ever be another you.
A Clone of Your Own? by Arlene Judith Klotzko (OUP)